My grandpa is the Marine in the middle  – the one holding the pineapple.   My guess is that this was taken in Hawaii.

Ruth Cossaboon was my husband’s great aunt and from what I’ve heard she was quite the lady.

I found a few newspaper articles about her service during WWII that I thought I’d share today.

From the Perry Herald, Perry, NY, Wednesday, June 16, 1943.

MISS COSSABOON NOW U.S. MARINE

Miss Ruth Cossaboon, daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. Van Cossaboon, has enlisted in the Marine Corps.  Sworn in at New York City last week, she is now on the reserve list awaiting call to active service service in a few weeks.  She expects to receive her basic training at the Marine base, New River, N.C.  By an odd coincidence, Miss Cossaboon is the only Marine of the hundred-odd local men and women now in service, as far as is known.  One other member of the Marine Corps, Pvt., Edward Courtney, was killed in an auto wreck early in the war.

This is from the Wyoming County Times, Warsaw, NY, Thursday, July 22, 1943, Page 4

FIRST SILVER SPRINGS LADY TO LEAVE FOR SERVICE IN THE MARINES

Tuesday evening Agnes Baker’s restaurant was the scene of another Citizen’s Sendoff supper to honor Miss Ruth E. Cossaboon, daughter of Rev. and Mr. N. Van Cossaboon, who will leave soon for service in the Marines, and Robert W. Fagan, who leaves the 21st of July for service and he will report to Camp Upton, L.I.

After a large company of relatives and friends had enjoyed the supper, and the usual short speeches were given and the Testaments and Legion literature were presented to Miss Cossaboon and Mr. Fagan, a short time was spent in wishing them the best of luck and a speedy return.

Perry Herald, Perry, NY, November 10, 1943:

Cpl. Ruth Cossaboon is spending a few days with her parents, Rev. and Mrs. N. V. Cossaboon. Cpl. Ruth who recently graduated from the Air Control School in Atlanta, Ga., has been assigned to tower control duty at Edenton, N.C.

Perry Record, Perry NY, March 15, 1945:

Rev. and Mrs. N. Van Cossaboon have received word that their daughter, Cpt. Ruth Cossaboon , has been transferred from Edenton, N.C. to the Marine Base at Quantico, Va, where she is an Air Control operator.

Perry Record, Perry, NY, February 28, 1946:

Air Control Operator
Miss Ruth Cossaboon, daughter of Rev. and Mrs. N. Van Cossaboon, has accepted a position as air control operator at the army airport near Harrisburg, Pa. This is a large transport center and friends of Miss Cossaboon wish her much luck in her new position. Miss Cossaboon has recently received her honorable discharge from the armed forces.

I do know that he served on the cutter “FIR” (WLM-212), which was based out of Seattle, WA. I found a wonderful publication about the history of this ship, including some great pictures. It answered many of my questions about what his duties may have been.

I had a comment on one of my previous Coast Guard-related posts from Dick Levesque, and that led me to his wonderful website, Coast Guard Pics.   He is a retired Coast Guardsman who created his site for anyone interested in pictures related to the Coast Guard.  What a great idea!  I sent him the pictures I have to add to his site.  Do you have any Coast Guard pictures in your collection?

The following picture was in my stack of those unidentified. With a little googling, I found out what it is. It is the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, off the coast of Oregon. It was on a very cool website called Lighthouse Friends, where you can search for lighthouses by map.  It only took me a couple of minutes to find what I was looking for!

It is no longer a working lighthouse. I saw a picture with the waves way over the top of the building, so I can see why it was abandoned.  I read that “storms often brought flying rock and debris crashing through the lantern room and iron roof.  The fog signal would clog with pieces of seaweed or rock”. The repairs were just too much. Someone actually bought it and is trying to sell space to put your loved one’s urn in. Hmm.

Can you imagine being THAT isolated though?  I don’t see anywhere to walk around, do you?  In the article I read, it mentioned the lighthouse keepers not getting along with one another after being cooped up together for so long (there were 4 of them assigned there for 3 months at a time). It said that “enraged keepers were known to pass notes at dinnertime rather than speak to each other”. Wow. I wonder if the FIR stopped here to drop off supplies, or perhaps switch out stir-crazy keepers.  Maybe my grandpa just took a picture as they passed by.  Who knows.

Hopefully someday, a researcher will be able to find their ancestor.

I’m so proud of my “Papa” as we always called him.  He saw so much action by the time he was 20, but it was that way with many men during WWII.  I can’t imagine what a stressful time this must have been for his mother, having four sons all gone to war at the same time.  Thankfully, they all came home!

Here he is on the left, with a friend.  I really wish that I had a picture of all 4 brothers together.  I wonder if they took one after the war.

I can’t even begin to imagine how scary that must have been to get this letter. I have a husband in the Army, so I can sympathize.

I am just thankful that he was only wounded, or I wouldn’t be here today!!

My grandpa, Alphonso James Thornton, Jr. served in the Marine Corps during WWII. He is on the right.

He received the Purple Heart.  My dad has it now along with this newspaper clipping.

First with my hives.  Yuck.

Then we decided to hop in the van and take a little drive.  We went from Fairbanks to Valdez to Anchorage to Denali and back to Fairbanks again.  Over 1,000 miles. In 2 days.  It was a gorgeous drive with beautiful scenery.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many mountains in my life.  Everywhere we turned, there were more. Here is Denali (aka Mt. McKinley) which is impressively humongous.

And do you know what?  I still managed to get some genealogy done.  Because I’m sneaky like that.

While we were in Anchorage, we stopped at Ft. Richardson to get something at the PX.

And I managed to talk my husband into stopping at the National Cemetery on Post.  I knew that my mom’s Uncle “Red” Walden Bergman was buried there, along with his wife June.  He was stationed up here while he was in the Army and he ended up staying. This is the only picture that I have of him.  I never knew him, because he died when I was 2.

I was worried that it was going to be hard to find the gravestone, but I was pleasantly surprised.

They had a book outside, full of all the names of the people buried there, with sections and grave numbers listed.  If only every cemetery was as organized!

Here is his gravestone: