2024 HOMETOWN HERO-EDWIN DONALD JAMES & ROBERT DONALD HAGER

Thank you all for attending the East Liberty Memorial Day Ceremony this morning. I thank the Wood-Rosebrook Post of the American Legion and the Perry Township Trustees for hosting this ceremony each year. Throughout our great country’s history, members of the armed services have had their exploits or careers lionized, written about in the pages of many books, or even had their likenesses grace the big screens of cinema. Truly, many of us will recognize names like William Tecumseh Sherman, Eddie Rickenbacker, George Patton, Carlos Hathcock, or Michael Murphy. These are service members whose careers, through God’s divine providence, made substantial impacts on the conflicts and wars in which the U.S. was involved. To be sure though, there are countless others whose service does not have the fanfare or prominence attached to them. Indeed, the very fact that many of you are here today is to reverently remember individuals similarly situated. They were our family members, our friends, or neighbors. They owned businesses we patronized or were members of our church. Others were wounded or never came home. And even though all their time in the military does not fill pages or screentime, a simple truth remains: each of them pulled on that heavy rope of service to ensure the sail of freedom that propels these United States onward stayed aloft. To be sure, the vast majority of those who served throughout our history are such people. Today, we discuss two of those individuals. Edwin Donald James was born in 1895 here in East Liberty and attended Jesup Scott High School in Toledo, graduating in 1914, the year World War I began. His uncle by marriage was Fremont C. Hamilton, the founder and president of the Hamilton Bank, organized in 1899, right here in East Liberty. Edwin’s uncle Fremont was active in the community as a member of the Masonic Lodge and he eventually became director of the Bellefontaine Savings Building & Loan. After high school, Edwin enrolled at The Ohio State University and joined in the brandnew ROTC Military Aeronautics Program. In mid-July of 1917, Edwin James was enlisted in the US Army Signal Corps, which was the home of fledgling American air power. In January of 1918, just the following year, he was honorably discharged as a private so that he could receive his immediate commission as a second lieutenant. Edwin relocated to Ellington Field, near the Gulf Coast of Texas. Ellington Field was among the chief advanced flight centers for the Signal Corps, with its own gunnery and bombing range on a small peninsula in the Gulf. Think of that, James was training to be an aviator just 15 years after the Wright Brothers flew for the first time! Truly, that was the very tip of the spear of military advancement of its day. As was the case though in those early days of flight, taking to the skies was dangerous business and Ellington Field recorded the most pilot fatalities among all U.S. Army training bases throughout the United States. One such fatality was this year’s first Hometown Hero, Edwin D. James, who died when he collided mid-air during a training flight. Our second individual was Robert Donald Hager. He was born in West Mansfield in 1926, his family moved to Columbus shortly after. In fact, Dr. Robson’s mother Gerry, and Robert were first cousins. A graduate of North High School, Robert was by all accounts, an active student.  Vice President of his senior class, an officer in Link Club, and the President of the Inter-Club council. Hager graduated from North High on June 8, 1944, and joined the Army the next month. After several months of training, he set off from Fort Meade on January 29, 1945, en route to his assignment to the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division. In the few months prior to Hager linking up, the 22nd Infantry had been involved in fierce fighting along the Siegfried Line, the nearly 400-mile-long German-built defensive network of more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels, and tank traps. Thinking the 22nd needed some relief, the Allied high command pulled it out of Western Germany and sent it south to the Luxembourg area for rest and refit. However, it soon found itself as the southern defensive flank in the Battle of the Bulge. In the first week of February 1945, the 22nd Infantry attacked into Germany and seized the city of Prüm. It later crossed the Rhine River and eliminated the resistance before finally occupying the city of Nuremberg, the site of the famous post-war trials. Somewhere in this fighting, on Easter Day, April 1, 1945, Robert Hager, our second Hometown Hero was killed, probably only six weeks or so after arriving. Barely than a month later, Hitler would kill himself in his bunker and the war in Europe would end. Two men of common heritage, hailing from our humble corner of the land of the free. The first was training as a part of the newfound concept of militarized air power, which is, even today over 100 years later, the primary means of battlespace superiority.  The second, joining his unit after the bulk of fighting in Europe was over. D-Day was eight months earlier, the ill-fated Operation Market Garden and ensuing Battle of the Bulge had concluded by the time Hager arrived. Still, Edwin James died before he could get to his war and Robert Hager died within sight of his own war ending. These two men left no children and their deaths are events we struggle to understand. What did their sacrifice mean? Perhaps though, the message of their sacrifice was not in the end of their service, but in the beginning.  Edwin James joined that ROTC Military Aeronautics Program at Ohio State at a time when he was all but certain that learning to fly was a risky venture, that flying could lead to injury or death. James was among the earliest military pilots this country had and he was training up, preparing himself to go fly for the Allies over the desolate “no man’s land” of the Great War. For Robert Hager, we can try to imagine growing up and going through high school during the early days of World War II. As I stated, Hager graduated high school on June 8, 1944, which was just two days after the Normandy landings. For his part, when Hager got his chance, he stepped in as a replacement for the battered 22nd Infantry and helped continue the push into Germany to snuff out the last Nazism. The essence of each of these men was perhaps not the length of a distinguished career or the ability of their time in the military to fill pages of books. Instead, their essence was a willingness to serve their country at a time when their service was needed. Edmund Burke, the prominent 18th-century philosopher and member of British Parliament said, “Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little.”  With near certainty, I tell you that in this life, we will never know why these two young men lived such short lives and how they fit into God’s plan for our nation. What I do know is the reason every one of us gathers together on one of the last mornings of May each year is to memorialize those who served our country in the unending fight for freedom. Those like Edwin James and Robert Hager, this year’s Hometown Heroes, who both lie in eternal rest here in the East Liberty Cemetery. We should, as members of families, of the workforce, of our communities, and as citizens generally, set aside the self-serving aspects of modern life, and instead manifest a modicum of the spirit of service these men exhibited. Your country needs you. Thank you all again for coming this morning. As you go about your week, please say a prayer for all those who have served our country and pray that God's perpetual light continues to shine on the United States of America 

Speech by Tyler Hall