Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 July 1950 — Page 23
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e Indianapolis Times
SUNDAY, JULY 30, 1950
'L This Indiana fers
After an under-age’
Born in Miami
Lt. Gen
County Log Cabin,
Ran Away as Lad to Join Marines
By GALVY GORDON MOTHER is praying today for her son, America's No.
1 “atomic airman” and ranking Hoosier-born general
in the Armed Forces.
And her boy, born in a Miami County Deer Creek Township log cabin, needs her prayers. He's in a mighty critical position, this Lt. Gen. Wil-
liam E. Kepner of the Air Force.
But the nation wasn’t relying on divine help alone when it placed Gen. Kepner, the Army’s fulfillment of the Horatio Alger story. in command of all the armed forces in Alaska. . It is depending on the brains and resources of this farm lad who learned life's lessons the hard way, through intense application to the job at hand, A boy whose dogged determination and “Army blood” is a reeruiting officer's dreamexample of how to make good in uniform. ¥ » » THE NATION has confidence fn this mother's son to hold the Territory of Alaska in this erucial hour at any cost. Significance of the fact he is America’s ace atomic-bomb delivery planner is keenly felt by Stalin and his ambitious hordes. Let's take a quick “look-see” at how this fun-loving Indiana youth who ran away to join the service at the age of 16, developed shoulders broad enough to carry three heavy stars for Uncle Sam. Eldest of three children,
it’s A ‘Personal War’ For Gen. Mcintosh
By GALVY GORDON I VISITED a typical Hoosier home disrupted by the war yesterday. It was a modest white frame house on Independence St. in Tipton. A home that lost a son in World War II and in which the head of the house was preparing to go off to another war. That father is Maj. Gen. Jesse E. Mcintosh, commanding general of the 38th Infantry National Guard, the “Old Man" to 8000 members of the all-Hoosier “Cyclone” Division. He was getting ready to leave for Camp Atterbury where J the citizen soldiers “could conceivably turn into the real thing.” Razor-pleated khaki shirts were hanging on the backs of chairs. And as she sewed crisp on those shirts,
summer maneuvers of
“Willie” grew up ™ Howard County following his birth 56 years ago in the log cabin home of his maternal grandparents. He swam and fished and hunted along the same creek his father before him had done. When the water wasn’t “just right” he trudged dutifully to the Kokomo Christian Church. = = . WILLIE, as his father, Harvey still calis him, attended Kokomo High School and did “just about as good as the next kid.” But he was restless. Something stirred in his blood. Answering the faint eall one day, Willie disappeared. His family heard from him about a year later and got a picture, too, of Pvt, Kepner in Marine uniform. The background was the Philippines, where he served three and a half years. . The prodigal returned, tried to apply himself to school, considered in turn being a doctor and a lawyer, but “soldiering” was in his blood. “He just wasn't erooked enough to be a lawyer, I always told him, and doctoring wasn't his line either,” his father, a retired farmer with only a half-hidden gleam of pride in his eyes, declared,
Maj. Gen. Jesse E Mein tosh . . . debt to son.
near Bologna, his P-38 and those of several other pilots in the flight failed to return. The bddies of the other air-
men were recovered. Mer son's
never was and a month-long searching expedition ia the
“hilly. eoastal regions of east
,Iuly by her husband proved ? fruitless.
WwW
Gen. Kepner, Hoosier, Heads Alaskan
Set Free Blom | Recordin 1928
And always the one-time em boy was guest of honor. : Two years ago his mother was stricken. A cerebral ner 1 i 3 rhage, doctors called it. She lies semi-paralyzed in a hospi- = tal at Peru, Her prayers and = thoughts are often centered om the restiess boy who ran away to join the Marines.
Less than two months ago the - general and his family, a sis ter, Mrs. William E. Kinney, of near Kokomo, and a brother, James M. Kepner, Jefferson Township Trustee, gathered around their mother's hospital
AA
ral paraded
SO, WHEN unrest developed on. the Mexican border, Willie got back Into uniform, this time in the old 38th National Guard Infantry Division, Second lieutenants’ bars came
shortly after and started him on the steady rise through the
grades. And khaki has been his color ever since, He was married in 1921 to
the sister of an Army buddy, the former Jean Wilcox, Clarksville, Tenn. She shares his burden and glory today. Reported dead on several occasions in World War I, Gen.
And what's a young woman gping to do, alone with a young son on the West Coast? ~ » ® “LL. NEVER give up” smiled Mrs. McIntosh, referring to that dark day In early 1945 when the sinister !‘missing” telegram tore into her heart, saddened her home. Husband’ Jesse, who was over there and looked for news of his son in person, doesn’t share her faint optimism. “We might as well admit he is dead. It's better now for us to dedicate our lives to that purpose for which he died. We can’t “epay my son or the sons of thousands of others who died that the world might live.” Of the 38th he says, “They're among the finest in the nation, but at a time like this, we're not
going to ‘quibble’ about how we.
serve, just get us over there” » ». w BORN IN a Tipton County log cabin near the Madison County line, Gen. McIntosh was the son of a part-time Pligrim Holiness minister, part-time farmer. The late Rew J.J. McIntosh set his feet early on the “straight and narrow,” discipline that later was to serve
triumphantly
his life, mother and wife.
Kepner earned the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit awards from several countries and the Army of Oecupation ribbon. Fruit salad garnered in the second World World War, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, makes his chest a veritable rainbow. He lost part of his jaw while leading a battalion in World War 1 action. : ® ® =» - FAME IN “the wild blue yonder” came to Gen. Kepner first as a heavier-than-air-ship pilot. He won the James Gordon Bennett International Bal-
Lt. Robert L. Mcintosh . . .
failed to return.
ling in old Tipton waterworks tank where “sunnies grew to monster size.” The young Tipton lad ran off to Indianapolis to enlist in April, 1917. Patriotic fervor coursed through his veins . . . the same fervor that even today
- doesn’t make him ashamed to
blink a tear as Old Glory is hauled down at sunset. ‘Recruiting officers gave the
18-year-old lad permission to return home and explain to his ,
through Kokomo with the
women in
Nephe TR
loon Trophy in 1928 for a since unbroken speed in free balloon racing. In 1934, Gen. Kepner went higher than man had ever before ventured, 61,000 feet. It was 1930 before Indiana's top ranking airman started pioting winged aircraft, “World's Greatest Bombardier” title came to the general in World War II. After commanding the 8th Air Force and later the 2d Bombardment Division under Lt. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, he succeeded to the command of the 8th Air Force, His 24 wartime missions included
Private in the 13th Cavalry... later to 78th Field Artillery of the 6th Infantry Division and service in England and France during World War I... second lieutenant in 2d Battalion of 152d Infantry Regiment of the Indiana Guard . . . his first command as a captain in Company KE, 1524 Regiment in 1927 , ,. major in 1937 When war clouds gathered over Europe in 1937, Gen. MeIntosh went into federal service as a Lleutant Colonel in the 152d. He served as executive officer of the regiment throughout most of its Pacific combat days, ducked Kamikaze planes with others in convoys, had numerous RArrow escapes, picked up a “flower garden” full of medals for his part in the war. One star and assistant command of the 38th Division came in early 1948, full command near the end of the year. The second star from “a grateful uncle” came in October, 1949.
Mrs. Mcintosh, the girl Sun. McIntosh became engaged to during a lengthy World War 1 correspondence without ever Seeing in person, is the grand-
daughter of the late R. L. Leeson founder of R. I. Leeson
& Sons general department ; Fiwood
Willian
10 in and 14 In
bombers.
fighters
» » ~ GEN, KEPNER was to have “master - minded” the all-out bombing of Japan. Instead, he became deputy commander of the 1948 Bikini project and the A-bomb test at Eniwetok in 1948. Before the present command he was liasion officer for the Air Force to the Atomic Energy Commission, Air Force special weapons testing and development group head and chief of atomic energy division of the Air Force, Biggest thrill for the general,
Shoplifters’ Loot Runs Into Thousands Yearly, But There Is Little Prosecution
By CLIFFORD THURMAN SMOOTH-FINGERED shoplifters operate on a wide scale in “Indianapolis and Ihe take: runs into thousands of dollars
yearly. : But there is little prosecution. Often the “lifters” are caught, but the thefts are so
minor dollarwise it doesn't pay a store to take action. “We can’t do much about it.” Chief of Detectives John J. (Jack) O'Neal said. “When we grab a shoplifter-—and we have several detectives assigned to the work --nine times out of 10 we can’t; stand up in court, “Oh, we have the evidence and all that, but the stores involved just won't prosecute. It is next to impossible to get a department head from some of the major stores to come into court and testify against =a shoplifter, Often it isn’t worth it... maybe a spool of thread is taken.”
- ” » THE INSPECTOR cited a recent case in which an Indianapolis woman “lifted” more than 35000 worth of from stores here. He was able to convict on one item, a matter
LL Zs
tamily To Ih aLe Ts
perhaps, was when he stepped off a plane at Bunker Hill Naval Air Training station, a few miles from the Miami County, Indiana, farm home of his parents. There were brass bands and Army brass, school chums and boyhood acquaintances, government officials and scores of relation. ' But most of all there waited there, eyes misty with Joy and pride, his mother, Julia. » ~ ~
THERE FOLLOWED a round of VIP banquets in Kokomo, in Indianapolis, in forts and stations throughout : the nation.
who come in here from other cities and try to make profit able raids on a one-day stand.™ What do the big stores do to prevent. shoplifting?
Congtantly, day in and day out, store protection agents pa-
trol with alert eyes. They watch for thefts and try to prevent them. In many cases, they say, large thefts are balked because an alert private dectective sees
~ what is going on and calls & halt. ;
aie store
usu Y; take
.but they seem to
.complets line of. kitchen utea-
- ~ - THE CHILDREN feted their parents May 25 on the occasion | of thelr 57th wedding anni | versary. Mother looked on and glowed with realization of a job
well done . . . a daughter, the wife of a successful farmer; a son who went on through school © and entered politics. And her | eldest son, who wasn't too proud to go back to Kokomo High School in 1948 to receive a belated high school diploma. Effects of the ‘appointment July 12 of Gen. Kepner to the far north command have ale ready been felt. In a uniquely Hoosier, confie dence-inspiring and friendly manner he told all Alaskans there was no need for hysteria or alarm. And he's the kind of a soft-spoken, self-assured mam you can believe, Alaska 1s in good hands.
DE
warned to remain away from the store where the offense was committed. “I don't see how they do t.
manage,” Ingpector O'Neal says. “Recents ly we had a woman in here with several fur coats, a half dozen table model radios and a
sils, including some 12-meh “ih skillets, : 4 “We have all kinds of people: : ? accused of shoplifting. Most of them go after valuable things that can be sold. ; “But we have hundreds of other women, who are content to steal a thimble or a spool of thread.
5 & #