During the 1950s, a trip to Perry from rural Dexter, Iowa, where I grew up, usually took us to the corner of Panther Store, then north past Washington Township School. Mom would always reminisce that her two younger brothers had graduated from there.
Clabe and Leora Wilson, along with four sons, moved to a farm southwest of Minburn, to be tenant farmers, the spring of 1939.
Danny and Junior finished their freshman and sophomore years at Washington Township School. When they learned that football wasn’t offered, the Dexter coach asked Wilsons if they knew what a good football player Danny was. And offered to have him live with them through the rest of his schooling so he could play football.
Danny Wilson said he wanted to stay with the family–with brothers Delbert, Dale (who graduated from Dexter High School just that spring), and Junior.
Dan attended Washington Township two years, played basketball, helped on the farm, and went hunting in the timber regularly with his dad and brothers.
Danny Wilson was valedictorian of the Class of 1941.
That December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. The Wilsons knew this would change their lives. One brother Donald was still in the Navy, aboard the USS Yorktown. Oldest son Delbert would probably be recalled to the Navy. And Dale had had to register for the draft.
My mother Doris, a sister of the Wilson brothers, was working as a waitress at Perry’s McDonald Drug Store. Junior’s classmate, Jack Jackman, didn’t have money or decent clothes and wasn’t going to the banquet, so Junior said he didn’t want to go either. Instead, they showed up at the soda fountain counter at McDonald’s, where Doris was working. She made them the best malts that she could, and she paid for them, too.
Ed Kautzky, a grade behind Junior, said that Junior could find humor in about anything, but that he did things well. They were all a little envious of his hunting and fishing stories.
Another neighbor, Marjorie (Hill) Joslin remembered the Wilson boys driving by on the tractor without shirts, and how brown they became.
Junior was a good student, too, but when he learned that Dan had to give a speech at commencement, he made sure he wasn’t at the top of his class. The Class of 1942 graduated in gowns for the first time. Leland Lapp said that their class motto was “Tonight we launch. Where shall we land,” which made him uncomfortable, since the war was on.
About the time Junior was graduating, his brother Donald was in desperate combat in the Battle of the Coral Sea (one carrier was lost, Don’s carrier damaged) and the Battle of Midway (his Yorktown was sunk).
Soon Delbert rejoined the Navy. And Dale enlisted in the Army Air Force to become a pilot. The next year, both Danny and Junior joined the Air Corps, as they usually called it. While Clabe and Leora were still at the farm, the first telegram arrived with the news that Dale was Missing in Action off New Guinea.
All five sons were in the service, so Clabe Wilson couldn’t keep up with all the farming by himself. He and Leora found an acreage to buy just south of Perry.
All five sons served. Only two came home. The family story is told in Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II.
The brothers are remembered on the Dallas County Freedom Rock®, which is only a couple of miles from where they were tenant farmers.
I wish the young couple who own The Schoolhouse Estate success as they work to restore the old Washington Township School and share it as a wedding venue and community gathering place!