WW II soldier’s dog tags returned to family
Nearly 70 years ago, Uniontown native Frank Richard Everhart lost his dog tags while serving as a medic with a U.S. Army field hospital in England during World War II. But a British gamekeeper, a British businessman and a retired manufacturing engineer from New York worked together with assistance from the Herald-Standard to recently return the dog tags to Everhart’s family.
“I was so touched with the effort of these men,” said Patrice Everhart Madden of Elkton, Md., the eldest of Everhart’s five children. “They didn’t know each other. They didn’t know my father. People went out of their way. It was so nice of them to care.”
Everhart, who died five years ago at age 80, worked as a physical education instructor for 34 years in the Red Clay School District in Delaware until his retirement in 1990. Madden said her father coached basketball, baseball, soccer and also may have coached track.
Coaching was in the Everhart blood as Everhart’s father, Abe “A.J.” Everhart Sr., was a coach at Uniontown High School who guided the Red Raiders to their first state basketball championship in 1925, and his brother Abe Everhart Jr., coached basketball, track and cross-country at Uniontown with his basketball team winning two state championships in 1962 and 1964. Everhart Jr. was inducted posthumously into the inaugural class of the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
A 1942 graduate of Uniontown High School, Frank Richard “Dick” Everhart started college at Indiana University of Pennsylvania when he was drafted into World War II at age 19. After the war, he finished his degree in education at West Virginia University and then went to work in Narrows, Va., where he met and married his wife, the former Alice Brown, before moving to Delaware.
The couple had five children: Madden, who teaches special education in the Red Clay School District; Rebecca Everhart Mattei, a homemaker in Newark, Del.; James Everhart of Wilmington, Del., who is an elementary teacher in the Red Clay School District; Billie Everhart Edwards, who lives near Hazelton, and breeds and trains Springer spaniels; and Frank Richard Everhart Jr. of Wilmington, who served in the Air Force and is now a physical therapy assistant. Alice Everhart is a retired homemaker living in Wilmington. This branch of the Everhart family has produced nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren for Dick and Alice Everhart.
World War II called many young men and women from Fayette County, including members of the Everhart family. Three Everhart brothers served in the war, including Dick, James and William, according to their younger sister Pat Everhart Seeman of Peachtree City, Ga. James Everhart died while co-piloting a plane in Louisiana in 1942. William Everhart made it through it the war and taught at South Union High School. He was in the Army Reserves and was called back to duty when he also died in a plane crash in 1952 while flying solo in Texas.
Dick Everhart returned home at the end of WWII. Madden could not give much information about her father’s military service and is now trying to get hold of his service records.
Ironically, however, Madden said, “My father never spoke about his experiences in the war very much than to say he lost his dog tags.”
Madden received those dog tags, which is the common name for military identification tags, thanks to the efforts of a trio of men. They are Charles McGrane of Ballston Lake, N.Y., located near Albany, and Robert Rogers and Andrew Essex, who both live in the county of Essex, which is near Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Rogers is a gamekeeper who lives in a cottage on the Shortgrove Estate, while Rusack operates Rusack Search & Selection Ltd., a headhunter business for travel and aviation. Rusack, who lives in a village called Wendens Ambo, keeps horses at the Shortgrove Estate, a privately owned, historic manor that was used as an American field hospital during WWII. Rusack, who has an interest in WWII, found out about the dog tags from Rogers, who enjoys searching for items on the estate with a metal detector.
“He’s found at least six dog tags from various people,” said Rusack. “I photographed them and sent them to Charles McGrane to see if he remembered some of these names.”
McGrane, 86, is retired as a mechanical engineer who had built submarines and ships. During WWII, he had served as a clerk with the Army’s 280th at the field hospital in Shortgrove.
He said of Everhart, “There were about 200 soldiers in the 280th Station Hospital and I knew most of them. I can’t remember after all these years what Frank Everhart looked like.
He was working in a different part of the hospital. But I remember the name.”
McGrane has kept in touch with the people who live around Shortgrove after being contacted a few years ago by the WWII U.S. Medical Research Centre. He produced a record about his war experiences that can be found on their website, which allows re-enactors, collectors, researchers and historians to have access to information for research and allow them to communicate with other people having similar interests.
McGrane’s story that details on the set up of the field hospital and army life can be found at http://med-dept.com/testimonies/charles_mcgrane.php.
McGrane told the Herald-Standard the outfit was sent to the Shortgrove Estate to establish an Army mobile hospital in anticipation of D-Day, which took place June 6, 1944.
In his website story, McGrane said, “Casualties from Normandy began to arrive. We received thousands of casualties from France. We were ready for them. The first trainloads were moved from the train and into the hospital wards in 105 minutes.”
McGrane told the Herald-Standard that the field hospital moved to Cherbourg, France, after taking care of D-Day casualties. The unit would be in Germany by the end of the war.
McGrane would leave the 280th to serve as a rifleman. He transferred to the 9th Infantry Division, also finishing the war in Germany. But he continued to feel an affinity for the 280th and that’s why he lent his assistance to help Rogers and Rusack locate the Everhart family.
Rusack said Rogers found Everhart’s dog tags in January and sent a photo of them on to McGrane, who contacted Mark O’Keefe, executive editor of the Herald-Standard about a possible story.
O’Keefe suggested that McGrane write a letter to the editor about the dog tags and ask that anyone interested contact him.
“I thought it was very interesting, and thought that surely someone would contact him if there were any relatives in the area,” said O’Keefe. “I’m very excited that things worked out and we were able to help these people make such a great connection.”
The letter to the editor about the dog tags was published in the Herald-Standard in February. In the letter, McGrane noted they belonged to Frank R. Everhart and that his next of kin was listed as Mary R. Everhart, 16 Murray Ave., Uniontown.
“Lo and behold, he received an e-mail from Patrice Madden – Frank Everhart’s daughter,” said Rusack. “It was quite a chain of events.”
Several Uniontown residents read the letter and contacted Seeman, including Dolores Lukotch and Irma Trent, wife of retired Herald-Standard sports editor Tod Trent, as well as family members. Seeman then contacted Madden and other members of Dick Everhart’s family.
Noting that the find came five years after her father’s death, Madden said, “It was a little reminder, and I was so touched.”
McGrane praised the efforts of Rogers and Rusack, noting, “I’m surprised people in England are going to all that trouble. I admire them for doing it.”
He said of his own effort, “I still feel connected to that unit. We were family. So when the people who found the dog tags asked me to help locate the person who lost it, it was the least I could do.”
Rusack, whose father served as a captain in the medical corps with the British army in Burma during WWII, communicated with Madden through e-mail and was pleased to be able to send the dog tags on to her.
This is actually the second set of dog tags that Rusack and Rogers, along with his wife, Evelyn, who prepared the correspondence, has been able to send to families in America. The first set belonged to a man named George E. Braunschneider, whose family lives in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Rusack said, “It’s an amazing story to reunite people with a part of their family history.”
He said of Rogers, “He’s delighted. When I told him that I found two of the families, he was very moved by it.”
Rusack and Rogers are now hoping to find the family of Edwin E. Hager, whose dog tags were also found at Shortgrove. Rusack said no hometown is listed on the Hager dog tags but that WWII establishment records show Hager enlisted on the same day as Everhart at the same place – Greensburg.
Rusack said, “It’s just great when you start a project like this and reunite a valuable piece with the family 67 years later.”
Seeman said, “I think that’s very nice. The family appreciates that. I’m sure that was something special for them to have.”
Madden again expressed gratitude for the efforts of everyone involved and is thrilled to have her father’s dog tags.
She said, “I show them to everybody.”