HOPEWELL VALLEY VETERANS ASSOCIATION
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW OF DAVID LOWE
INTERVIEW DATE: May 5, 2008

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY LAUREN ROSENSTOCK

Ms. Rosenstock: Today’s date is May 5, 2008. I am interviewing Hopewell Valley Veterans Association member David Lowe at his residence in Princeton, New Jersey.  Mr. Lowe served in the 40th Division of 160th Infantry, during the Korean War. He was raised in Hopewell, New Jersey and is an active member in the Hopewell American Legion Post 399.

Mr. Lowe, I am excited to interview you today for the Hopewell Valley Veterans Association. We thank you for donating the eagle statuary from the American Legion for use at Alliger Park.

Q.  Can you describe the history and background of the eagle statuary?

A.  When I worked for a local electrician in the middle 1980s, we did some work at Johnson Atelier, which is J. Seward Johnson Jr.’s sculpture studio in Trenton, on Ward Avenue. We were doing electrical work there for the company, and I happened to see one of the men working on the sculpture of the eagle. I made contact with him and told him that I would like to purchase it and have it presented at the American Legion home in Hopewell and put on top of a granite monument. We proceeded with the arrangements on it. I was to buy the eagle and Joseph Bowker Company in Bordentown handled granite monuments. I made arrangements with them and of course the eagle came from one of the men who made the sculpture at Johnson Atelier. Then Johnson Atelier came up and installed the granite monument with the eagle on top in front of the American Legion.

Q.  How did you decide on the eagle in particular? What does it symbolize to you?

A.  It symbolized for me the American Legion. I have always been partial to eagles. It is very symbolic to have an eagle up on top of a monument for a veterans group.

Q.  How did you decide that you wanted a monument in particular?

A.  There was no decision. But, I thought, how was I going to put this eagle up there? I was talking to some of the people and they said a granite monument. It is about ten or twelve feet high with the eagle spread out on top. The eagle spread is about four feet on top of the monument. It was put right in front of the flag pole which is located in front of the American Legion Post 339 in Hopewell, New Jersey.

Q.  Do you remember and can you describe the day you received the statue?

A.  I talked with the American Legion, and they accepted my offer to have this monument put up there. I was very excited about it. I think it made a beautiful front centerpiece. As you drive into the American Legion, it stands out just as much as anything could.

Q.  How did the other members receive the statue?

A.  Very well liked. Everyone was very excited about it. It has always been a focal point since we have been up there since 1965. People question where it came from many, many times.

Q.  How did you decide to join the American Legion?

A.  Well, when I got out of the service, I joined the American Legion right away. I had two brothers who were already American Legion members and were active in the Legion. It is the closest thing to me as an organization that I ever belonged to. The American Legion is the best thing, closest to my heart. When we built the American Legion on Van Dyke Road in Hopewell, I was in business in Hopewell at the time. Every day on my lunch hour I would go and check on the construction of the building. I was Chairman of the new building when it was built. So, I was there all the time to make sure everything was going the way we wanted it to.

Q.  The Hopewell Valley Veterans Association is going to have a Memorial Day celebration, and we anticipate transporting the statuary for that event or some time thereafter. How did you decide that the Veterans Association could acquire the eagle for the park?

A.  Well, we are putting the Legion building up for sale because we can’t keep it. We don’t have enough members and so on. The building is actually going to be sold. I was approached by the Highland Cemetery Association and asked if I would think about having the monument moved to the cemetery to honor all men and women up there. Highland Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the area up in Hopewell. I thought it was a very good idea until four or five months ago. I was approached by Joe Kianka to see if I would be interested in having the monument moved to Veterans Park. So right then, if the Veterans Park would like it, that is where it would go. It was more appropriate for everybody, all veterans, not only in the cemeteries, but all veterans that served in the armed services to have it at the park as a focal point.

Q.  How do you feel the Hopewell Valley community can benefit from having a public memorial park dedicated to local veterans?

A.  I think that everybody that I have been in touch with and talked to have been very enthusiastic about it and think that it is a great thing because all municipalities are building their own veterans park and setting up an area for veterans. I think that it is great that Hopewell Valley got into this and got it started, and it is going to be a great thing for the community when it is done.

Q. When men and women come to the Veterans Association’s events and see this beautiful eagle statuary, what do you hope that they will feel or recognize when they see this statue?

A.  I just hope that they’ll recognize that although I donated it, it actually came from American Legion Post 339, which I am so proud of. It came as a donation from them. I think it will be located at a very outstanding part of that park, as you go in and you see it around the circle or half circle by the flagpoles. It will be a tribute to the community and a feather in our cap, the American Legion, as a donation. I want people to know that the American Legion gave it as a gift to the park.

Q.  How do the general members of the American Legion today feel about the Veterans Association and the donation of the eagle statuary?

A.  I haven’t been going to meetings because I have been sick. It was a few months ago, Joe Kianka  said would you like to come to a meeting because they are going to bring it up on the floor to discuss the monument being moved to the park. Being that I had donated it to the Legion, he wanted me up there to explain it to the Legion and have my say. I did attend the meeting. All those that were in attendance at the meeting thought that it was a great thing that I was doing and what the Legion should do was to present this to the park, to the Hopewell Valley Veterans Association.

Q.  You touched on the American Legion to some extent. What is your background with the Legion and when did you join? What positions have you held over the years?

A.  I was drafted in the Army on December 7, 1951. I was at home living with my parents in Hopewell. I was drafted and went through Camp Kilmer at the time. Then I was sent to Ft. Eustis, Virginia for my basic training. After my basic training, I stayed in Ft. Eustis and taught in what they called a leadership school. It was almost for non-commissioned officers. I was actually a teacher at the school after I had my basic training. I was at Ft. Eustis, at the transportation school of the United States Army for about a year. In Korea at the time they were losing so many people that they had to replace, so they automatically changed my M.O.S., which is a military occupation specialty, from the leadership teacher to C.I.B., combat infantryman. I was sent to Korea by ship and landed in Kojedo Island which were the prisoner of war camps at the time, and of course we were in the war with Korea at the time. Then, I was aboard trains that went up through Soul, and I ended up in Heartbreak Ridge with the 40th Infantry Division, 40th Division of the 160th Infantry, in Heartbreak Ridge as a combat infantryman. I served about six months up on the front lines in Korea, in a combat zone. We lived in bunkers on the side of the hill and we did get back to Japan for R & R, which is called rest and recuperation, a week at a time. But, I actually served six months on the Heartbreak Ridge and the combat zone. I did move from the combat infantrymen and was put in a position in the office part of it. Also, it is even in my records, before I left Korea, I had the rank of Staff Sergeant, but I was actually temporary Company Commander of the whole company because we did not have any officers, they were lost in battle. So, even in my records, it shows where I was on a temporary assignment.

[break]

I was with Charlie Company of the 160th Infantry Regiment. We lived in bunkers on the back side of a hill. We would go out on patrol, and we made contact with the enemies often. I had two fellows who were with me, the same day that I had joined the company at Heartbreak Ridge. In the next two weeks, both of them had lost their lives. Fortunately, I came through it and after serving my time there, I returned to the United States and flew into Seattle, Washington and came back to New Jersey and Camp Kilmer. My brother, who had been in the service the same time as I, was up in Alaska, stationed there for his term. It was quite a coincidence because he was in Camp Kilmer the same time that I was returning from Korea. We both were discharged on the same day from his term in Alaska and my term in Korea. My discharge shows it as the 7th of January, 1960.

Q. Did all of your brothers serve?

A.  Yes. I have four other brothers. My older brother, he was a First Lieutenant and when he was discharged he was an Air Force pilot, test pilot, down in Texas. I have another brother, the next one down, he was in the Army and he served his time in Germany during World War II. My third brother, he was originally in the Merchant Marines, then he was drafted in the Army after that; so he served in the Merchant Marines and the Army. He had crossed the Atlantic Ocean quite a few times and even his ship had been torpedoed. After he got back home, they drafted him into the Army. He served two years in the Army going up to Alaska, like I said. My younger brother was drafted in the Army, and he was stationed in Germany. So, it was five brothers that were in World War II and Korea, and we were all worrying together at the same time. I can remember some of our parades in Hopewell, particularly on Memorial Day in Hopewell. We had five brothers all together in one line that had served the country, and we were very proud of all of it.

Q. That was a big shift for you to go from teaching right into conflict. How did you feel about that?

A.  Very, very nervous. They were losing so many people, they had to replace them. They were picking people out from wherever they could and automatically changed them from teachers and all other occupations in the service to infantrymen. I still have my uniform hanging in the closet over there. It was very hard to do. Of course, going oversees and leaving the family.

Q. Did they train you before you left for Korea?

A. Yes, before I arrived in Korea, I went to a CBR school in Japan, which was for two weeks. It was a chemical, biological, and metallurgical warfare. It trained us for that type of battle, if we had come to it. But, most of ours was out on patrols out on the front line, what they call the MLR, which is the main line of resistance, out in front of where groups or companies were stationed. There were many contacts with the enemy and the North Koreans. When I got home from the service and discharged, I had a talk show made up with slides that I had taken of my whole term in Korea and Japan. At that time we used picture slides. I went around to High Schools and gave talks. The slides showed the war in Korea and how we lived and what we lived through. It was very well accepted in all the schools. It’s too bad that I don’t have it all made up today, but that is all put away.

Q. Was there one main point that you would stress at these presentations about Korea that community members did not know about?

A.  The only thing I can say was how poor the people lived and the conditions. I had one little boy, they’d be outside of our camps and start begging for food after we got done. We were living in tents in Korea and all the scraps would go out in a big 55 gallon barrel. The kids, if they could get through the fence, would go and scrape up anything that they could find to eat. The conditions were very poor, very poor. I don’t regret any of my time in the service. I have seen a lot more than a good many people in service, because I was there at war time. I have seen my own buddies there who lost their lives right along side of me.

Q. How did you handle being away from home, did you write letters?

A.  Oh yes, they were always sending packages from home. You’d ask them for hand warmers to keep warm. It was probably twenty or thirty degrees below zero up there in the winter. We had what they called Mickey Mouse boots. They were insulated boots, but you tried to get hand warmers. Of course, they would send food or at that time cigarettes or whatever you could. Liquor. The natives there would always try to sell or barter with you to get anything they could like that. We did have beer up there, but there was no liquor as far as that was concerned. They did have beer that would come in to have the men quench their thirst or whatever.

Q. When you did have any down time, what would you do?

A.  Our bunker was located on the back slope, not the front slope toward the enemy. It was on the back slope. But, we would get mortar rounds that would come in and over top of the mountains and then come through our door. We tried to make an improvised door into our bunker that was made up of sandbags and logs and whatever. The down time, I know I have pictures in my files, I would go out and make a stool or chair out of pieces of lumber or take trees and tie them up and make a chair. You did whatever you could. A good amount of time, you would be up there sleeping right in the bunker. I remember one time sleeping and I guess I was on the top, there were three high like on a ship, we had rats crawling around just to bug you in the bunkers. They were looking for food or whatever they could get. We had one hot meal a day which was brought up in insulated cans. They would serve us in line. But other than that we had sea rations, just open the can up. If you got a package from home with any kind of goodies that they were allowed to send, you would split it up with all of your friends or buddies in the same unit that you were with.

Q.  What were you most proud of during your military service?

A.  I would say, the way the world is today, I was proud to go serve my country in a time of war and be there to help the people back home and preserve the freedom that we have today. I was proud to be a part of it and do what I could do to serve the country.

Q. What do you think is the biggest misconception about veterans and war in our community?

A.  I think probably a lot of it was people back home did not realize what servicemen went through and how they lived, unless they had a direct relative or contact that they had in it. But, I think that all the wars, even the one that we have today in Iraq, it is certainly no pleasure or picnic for any of them to be there. You never know when you are going to be here tomorrow or you are not. Or, your friends and buddies. The people back home should get behind all the servicemen, men and women alike. Be behind them and make them feel proud that they are there supporting the country.    

Q.  Can you describe the day that you were discharged?                                                                                                                                                 
A.  The day I was discharged from Camp Kilmore, New Jersey was December 7, 1953. I had served two years in the service. I had stated before that I was discharged in January 1960, but we were held in reserve from 53 to 1960 before we got our final discharge. I was discharged from Camp Kilmore the same day as my brother was discharged coming back from Alaska. When I got home, I did not know what I wanted to do for awhile. I immediately joined the American Legion. I had two brothers already in the Legion in Hopewell. My uncle Claude Dilts was the first commander of Hopewell Valley Post 339 in 1945. When the charter was given, there were 13 members that were in the original charter            for the American Legion, and my uncle was the first commander. My brother Raymond was the fourth commander in 1957. Later in years, when I joined the Legion, I was appointed as adjutant and then later years in 1956 or whatever it was, I was commander. I have been very active in all my years through my service with the American Legion. After serving as commander, I was appointed as finance manager. My brother had preceded me, he was ahead of me. But then, when I took it over as finance officer in 1975, I was thirty one years as finance officer at the American Legion until last year. But, I am very proud of it and having four other brothers, five in total, that served this country and were apart of the American Legion. We all have our bricks, five of them all together, at the Veterans Park. We are all proud of that too.

Q.  Can you describe the overall mission of the Legion?

A.  Overall mission is to remember and help veterans that come back from the service, get involved in community affairs. We have baseball teams that we sponsor, Boys State program, a coloring contest, and we have all kinds of money raising projects to sponsor these programs. I know that 339 is going to continue to have these. It has helped the community. There was a time in my own life, in 1960 or 1962, my mother went through a bad operation in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. She needed a lot of blood. We set up a program and my wife helped organize it. We had people come in, had a regular schedule, and people came in and donated blood for my mother. They came into the American Legion home and donated blood. We had doctors and nurses come from the University of Pennsylvania. I couldn’t get over how a small town like this would pull together when someone needed help. This is one of the outstanding things in my mind about the Legion that I can remember. They are always there to help anyone. We had a member of our post that had polio. We built him a home, a whole house. The Legion paid for it and built him a home. We were always there helping someone or helping some organization.

Q.  What has the Legion’s involvement with Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day been in the past?

A.  I ran the parade for twelve years, and I was chairman of it. It was always stated that we were the oldest, continuous Memorial Day parade in the state of New Jersey. Every year from World War I, actually it was started before that, it was the oldest and continuous parade in New Jersey. For twelve years I ran it, and then I finally had to give it up. Joe Kianka took it over from me. But now, because we have so low of membership, the fire company is taking it over this year and running the parade. We will be involved to a certain amount to be in the parade.

Q.  Can you describe the most memorable Memorial Day parade that you can remember?

A. One of them that stands out in my mind, we always had a reviewing stand. This one year, we had Colonel Clinton Pagano who was the Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police. He was a good friend of mine, and he was up there as a guest of honor. There was one year, if you remember Pan Am had a plane that went down in Lockerbie, Scotland. There were a lot of people killed. Joe Kianka’s brother Bill Kianka was the pilot of that plane, but somehow he got shifted off of that particular flight and was not on it. But, the plane went down in Lockerbie, Scotland and there were four or five people in the area that lost their lives on that flight. So on that particular year, I had the widows of all five of those people on the reviewing stand with Bill Kianka as their escort because he was supposed to be the pilot and somehow it changed and he was not on that flight. That really stood out in my mind. Then most recently, last year, my oldest living brother who is 88 now and is in an assisted living home in Maryland, he is the only living original member living in the post. There were 13 original members in 1945 that got on our charter and my brother was on it at the time and number four commander. They honored him last year at the parade. That is another one of the outstanding things that I can remember. Hopewell has always accepted the Memorial Day parade, and they’d line the streets. Not as much today as it was years ago. I mean back 10 or 15 years ago, we had parades where people were three, four deep standing and watching or in their chairs. That was the big day in Hopewell, having the Memorial Day go through.

Q.  Why do you think that the attendance has declined over the years?

A.  Attendance has declined because people are so much busier today. There are many more activities. They are able to go away. Younger people, we have quite a few that belong to our Post. They don’t have time today. If it is a young couple, they both have to work or they have families. They are racing here or racing there with their children with all kinds of activities. People don’t have the time or the enthusiasm that they had years ago. Memorial Day that was our big day in Hopewell. Of course, there are new people. They are here today and maybe gone tomorrow. It is not the old time, born and raised here, such as I was.

Q. Besides Veterans Day and Memorial Day, how can American citizens pay tribute to the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for the country?

A.  The only thing that I can say is that people should get behind the Hopewell American Legion and Veterans Association and support them any way that they can. When they have events at the memorial park, if you are able to, come out and see it. It is very impressive and makes you stop and think about what our men and women from our area went through. Just to see the flagpoles and walk around on the brick walk and see the names that are going to be on there eventually. Go out and support the Veterans Association in any way that you can.

Q.  Living in Hopewell, when you came back to the region as well as subsequent years when veterans would return, would the town hold any events to honor the returning soldiers and how were they received?

A.  I can’t think of anything in particular. The Legion was well organized when I returned, but there wasn’t any great big affairs put on that I can think of to honor them when they got back.

Q.  Can you describe the Legion’s association with the Boy Scouts over the years?

A.  Very good organization. In fact, I was one in my time and my brother was a Scoutmaster. One of my older brothers was an Eagle Scout, but Boy Scouts was always a very active group. We got involved very much with the Boy Scouts, and they did a lot of things. It should make anyone proud to be a part of that organization and grow up in it and do what you can for the community. They are always doing things for the community. We always had a large turnout for our Memorial Day parade from Scouts. I would say that if you have children of age and they want to get into the Boy Scouts, don’t stop them. It is a great thing to grow up with.

Q.  Did you know that the American Legion did a clothing for Korea drive during the Korean War?

A. No, the only thing that I can say is people from Hopewell that were in Korea, the community probably got together and sent packages over and came in and donated. Then churches and councils would get together and make up packages and send them over for Christmas time.

Q.  Did you feel the support of the Hopewell community when you were in Korea?

A.  I had very good support from the Hopewell people because my family was very well known. We were all born and raised there. We were apart of the community. Of course my two brothers were already out of the service when I went in, so we got very good support from all of the Hopewell people.

Q.  Can you describe the Lady’s Auxiliary Club and the Legion’s involvement?

A.  Well, the Lady’s Auxiliary Club was formed by wives of servicemen. Many, many years they would put on dinners and help us with the building where we were located down on Mercer Street until we got up there [Van Dyke Road]. They would have dinners and all kinds of things. They set up programs where they would get together and send out boxes at Christmas time to servicemen. The Auxiliary was one of the greatest. We probably had one of the greatest Auxiliary Club’s out of any Post at the time because of the cooperation with the men and what they did for the men at that time.  

Q.  Can you describe the annual carnivals at the Legion? Is there any year that is most memorable?

A. Well, carnivals were a very big event, you are right. Actually, we started down on the Rockwell Parking lot before we moved up to Van Dyke Road with our carnivals. Then we moved up there, and we had many good years. I was very, very active in it. I ran the raffle stand, where we raffled off groceries. The carnivals were probably the biggest money maker that contributed to our programs and our building. Every one of them was an outstanding thing and even today people will say, ‘Boy, I wish we had the carnivals back again.’  There were 6 or 7,000 people there walking around the grounds on carnival night. It was just something that the whole community looked forward to.

Q. Is there any one that stood out from the others?

A.  I can’t really think of anything that was more outstanding than the others. The support that we had, it was about 60 men and women who operated the carnival a night. 60 people a night, and this wasn’t all the work setting up before the carnival and afterwards.

Q.  When did the carnivals end?

A.  Oh geez, now you got me. [laughing]

Q. Why did it end, funding?

A.  Well, the cost of things, being sick, men getting older. I am not sure, maybe it is in the minutes and Joe can give you more details on that when you interview him.

Q.  Why did the Legion move to Van Dyke Road? How did that come to fruition?

A. When the Legion first started in 1945, they met in a community hall in a grocery store up on Seminary Avenue. Then in the early 1950s, the Legion got bigger and bigger with people coming out of the service. They bought a whole barn down on Mercer Street. It was an old horse barn. It had to have a lot of work done on it. They had to raise this barn, raise it up. You can imagine there were horses there, and the grounds were bad. [laughing] My father was who working at the Reading Railroad. He got all the lumber through Reading Railroad. He supervised it, raising this barn up. This complete barn and putting a new foundation under it and floors under it. The builders then remodeled it to a meeting hall. In fact, we had a Boy Scouts room upstairs and then we were there quite a few years. In fact, many of our carnivals were there and then it was probably 1956 or 55. We got bigger and bigger and then we decided we wanted to get more involved in things and have bigger carnivals. We heard that this property on Van Dyke Road was for sale, adjoining the railroad, 7.9 acres. We approached Jay Ashley Pierson who lived across the railroad at the farm adjoining the railroad about the property. We went over and talked with him, and we negotiated buying that property for the Legion from Jay Ashley Pierson. I was chairman of the whole building and purchasing of the property and putting the building up there, which was built by S. B. & H Builders. We didn’t have a lot of money to go ahead with this building at the time, but we decided to sell non-interest bearing bonds. In fact, we still have some of them back up at the Legion. People would put $100 or $1,000 whatever they could, and we would pay them back when we could, when we got on our feet.  Well, years went by and with fundraisers and dinners, we started paying back people who wanted them. A good many people just donated them, and they didn’t want the money back. The building got cleared eventually. It was a tremendous move. We had a place out of town, plenty of parking to make our carnivals larger and have things for the whole community up there. In my own mind, I hate to see it go because I was so involved in buying the property, building the building, having the building put up there and being a very active member for the past fifty, almost sixty, years. I have been very active, and it breaks my heart to have to see us leave, but with the cost of everything, there is no way for us to continue there.

Q.  What do you see as the future for the Legion in Hopewell Valley?

A.  I hope that it never dissolves, and I don’ t think that it ever will. If the few younger people stay on because every year we lose maybe 4, 6, 8 10, 12 members that pass away, so it is getting smaller all the time. Every year we lose 4 to 12 members that pass away. We were up to 409 members at one time and now we are at about 209. Our wishes, the people who are active up at the Legion, do not want it to dissolve. They want to keep having a charter and go ahead and sponsor all the programs that we can. Continue on, and we will find a place to meet either rent or have our meetings. American Legion will continue on to be an active member of Hopewell.

Q.  Is there anything a community member can do to help preserve the Legion in Hopewell?

A.  I would say yes. Any programs that we continue with, I hope people in the area will get behind and help sponsor. Help the Legion with the programs that they want to sponsor.

Ms. Rosenstock:  Thank you for letting me interview you today. Is there any question that I might have missed or a statement that you would like to end with today?

Mr. Lowe:  I can’t think of any in particular. But, it has always been a pleasure to talk about the Legion. As I said before, the organization is the closest thing to my heart. I have been so involved in it and my family from my father, my uncle, and my brothers. I am still involved up to the present day, coming close to eighty years old shortly, but I hope that I have a few more years to see the Legion serve the community the best way that they know how.

Ms. Rosenstock:  Thank you very much.

Mr. Lowe:Thank you Lauren.