WW-2 INDEX PAGE
HOME PAGE

WILLARD RUSSELL KOEN

      On Dec 21, 1941 I was working at Union Electric in St. Louis when I received a phone call from the Flat River office.  My parents had received notification from the Navy that my youngest brother (Willard) Russell Koen was in the hospital at Pearl Harbor.  I went home that evening and on Sunday morning we received a telegram informing us that he had died.  I took three months leave from work, but did not go back to work because I enlisted in the WAVES in March 1942. 

    Friends I had worked with at the Naval Air Primary Training Command were recalled to sea duty and while on shore leave they sent me a picture of Russell's grave marker a 331 at Halawa Cemetary.  I was transferred to NAS Honolulu in March 1945 and by that time the marker had a cross showing his name.   My first trip off base was to put flowers on his grave. 

    While I was at NAS Honolulu a cousin "Jake" Koen from Esther was stationed nearby.  We spent a lot of time together.  Two other cousins, Dale and Joe Smith, stopped there on their way back to Missouri and the four of us had a happy reunion.   

    I received my discharge from the Navy in November of 1945 and went back to Flat River Junior College for the spring semester in 1946. 

    From a news story:  More than a thousand people formed a funeral procession for the service last Sunday of Willard Russell Koen, Jr. the first war dead to return to St. Francois County.  The services were held at the Leadwood Methodist Church. 

    From a second news story:  Willard Russell Koen, Jr., 19, of Leadwood died at the Naval Hospital in Honolulu on Dec. 22 of a fractured cervical vertebrae he sustained the previous day.

The Daily Journal, St. Francois Co., Wednesday, April 26, 1995

WW-2 INDEX PAGE
HOME PAGE