If the stones in the St. John’s Lutheran Church Cemetery could talk, or if they could be read, it would give a fuller picture of the history of the old church built in 1848 in the town of Beck in what is now Arnold.
If church member Bernie Wilde has her way the cemetery grounds will put history in its place. She decided her latest mission will be to match the remaining headstones to the persons listed on the church records.
The idea was initiated when two St. John’s Lutheran School teachers – Linda Erkkinen, whose husband is a retired Army chaplain, and Barbara Obermeyer – attempted to locate the graves of those who served in the military for a Veterans Day activity. They located 22 veterans’ graves and children solemnly went through the cemetery placing flags on each one. The event was to make children aware of the importance of defending our nation and the freedoms we enjoy, Wilde said.
The only problem was that according to the church’s records there are 50 veterans’ graves in the cemetery, Wilde said.
Now Wilde, also a member of the Arnold Historical Society, will be looking for the rest of those graves in the new year. She hopes to locate the stones that are still in the cemetery and have the school’s eighth-grade students help clean and restore the stones in preparation for an Armed Forces Day celebration on May 18, 2014, and, of course, for Memorial Day.
Once the holiday has passed, Wilde hopes to continue her mission and locate those from the church who served in the military who might be buried in other places like Jefferson Barracks, for example.
In the meantime, children at St. John’s have a couple of pearls of history about those they know are buried there and those who are not. One of the veterans buried on the grounds is Corporal Wayne R. Paul, who served in Vietnam where he was exposed to Agent Orange before returning home. He was killed in a vehicle accident at age 35. Wayne was the son of Harold T. and Alma (Schwalbert) Paul, according to Wilde.
Corporal Paul’s uncle was Friedrich “Fritz” Paul, who served as a chauffeur to General John Pershing in WWI. Fritz was a member of the 314th Field Signal Battalion. He died at the age of 29 of influenza on March 7, 1919 in Treves, Germany. He is the only member of the Paul family to die on foreign soil. The Paul family received a memorial certificate signed by General John J. Pershing, a five-star general.
Pershing, a farm boy from Laclede, is the only person in U.S. history to be promoted in his own lifetime to the highest rank ever held in the U.S. Army – General of the Armies.
LOOKING BACK is a Leader online feature that highlights historic photos. Readers are invited to submit their historic Jefferson County photos for online publication. Send submissions to LOOKING BACK to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail them to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St., Festus (P.O. Box 159, 63028). Please include your name, phone number, a brief description of what’s in the photo and tell us how you came by it. Please also include when it was taken, where and by whom (if known). A new LOOKING BACK feature will be posted each week.
