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North Bend park re-dedicated to two soldiers killed in WW I

100 years later ...

KEVIN RAUCH/THE EXPRESS Just feet from the North Bend Schoolhouse that they attended, a newly built monument was re-dedicated to two North Bend men PFC Ira Keller and CPL Beale Darby, who were killed within days of each other in 1918 while serving their country in WW I. Family members of both men were on hand for the ceremony Sunday that included them being awarded Purple Hearts that the soldiers earned.

By KEVIN RAUCH

For The Express

NORTH BEND — One hundred years after their deaths while serving the United States in WW I, two of North Bend’s most beloved sons were honored during a celebration that re-dedicated a park in their names.

The Keller and Darby Memorial Park in North Bend was the site of the observance where well over 100 people gathered to remember PFC Ira Keller and CPL Beale Darby.

The July 15 event was held exactly 100 years ago in 1918 when 24 year-old PFC Keller was killed during the Second Battle of the Marne in France. Corporal Beale Darby was just 18 on July 18,1918 when he was lost during the Aisne-Marne Offensive.

KEVIN RAUCH/THE EXPRESS Whether it was sunny and humid or during a thunderstorm, the Pennsylvania Patriot Guard Riders stood at attention with American Flags in hand for over an hour and a half, drawing a rather loud and appreciative applause from those in attendance near the ceremonies end.

PFC Keller is recorded as the first death of a Clinton County man during WW I.

Patriotism and remembrance was the impromptu theme of the day as the afternoon drew many more observers than expected. Tents overfilled as all chairs were occupied, turning the day in a standing-room-only event on the fields of the Keller and Darby Memorial Park.

Passion for the two men a century later proved heartwarming as a downpour did not force a single gatherer away. Even those who weren’t able to fit underneath a tent remained.

Numerous invited guest speakers also braved the rainy-humid elements including State Rep. Mike Hanna and U.S. Rep. Tom Marino, Chuck Dillon speaking on behalf of State Sen. Joe Scarnati, Deputy Secretary Rick Vilello speaking for Gov. Tom Wolf and Clinton County Commissioner Paul Conklin.

Still, despite all of the dignitaries and their poignant remarks and praises upon the honorees, it was the families of PFC Keller and CPL Darby who were the special guests.

Richard White, center, of Woolrich stands with a Purple Heart in his hand that had just been given to him as a great-nephew of CPL Darby. Family members of CPL Darby look at a new monument dedicated to the WW I soldier.

Descendants of both men were plentiful and the backgrounds that brought them to North Bend on Sunday were quite different, yet still the same as families dealt with losing family members to war.

A great-niece to PFC Keller, Virginia Hoffman, arrived from Austin, Texas, to receive her great-uncle’s Purple Heart and to lay the first wreath at the newly constructed monument. Hoffman has spent her entire life studying her ancestor’s heroic death.

Virginia was raised by PFC Keller’s sister, Mary Keller-Long, in a house in Little Italee (next to North Bend), that’s just across the street from the house where PFC Keller was raised. Her great-uncle’s death was talked about continuously.

“Still to this day, I wake up to a photo of my great-uncle …every day. It was part of my growing up and something that has stayed with me,” Hoffman explained.

In recent years Hoffman and her family have spent quite a bit of time trying to uncover the history of her great-uncle. Those expeditions took her to France recently, as she tried to retrace and uncover as much of the past as she could.

Virginia Hoffman of Austin, Texas, laid a wreath on a monument honoring her great-uncle, PFC Ira Keller.

While touring battlefields such as the Second Battle of Marne, they even found spent shell-casings from WW I Hotchkiss machine guns in farmland with manufacturing dates of 1917, she said.

The story turns truly spine-tingling as Virginia holds some of those casing in her hands and recounts what she learned through her research and from a French Historian that she would later meet.

Virginia was about a quarter of a mile from where her great-uncle is believed to have been killed. She quite possibly holds shell casings from the battle in which her family member was killed 100 years ago.

Richard White of Woolrich, a great-nephew to CPL Darby, received Darby’s Purple Heart and placed a wreath on the monument. Unlike the Keller family, Richard explained that his family didn’t talk about what happened to his great-uncle.

Richard’s grandfather, a brother to PFC Darby, had a picture on the wall in his house, White said. Other than the picture, the Darby family did not find it comfortable to talk about the death of the soldier, who was just 18 years old when he was killed, he said.

Some other groups taking part in the celebration included the Renovo Community Choir; the Pennsylvania Patriot Guard Riders who should be applauded for standing, displaying American Flags even during the hardest of rains; Sylvia Moore; Martha Sykes; Renovo Honor Guard; the Boy Scouts; Christian Powell; the Bucktail High School construction trades class; Chapman Township supervisors and host Dave Bower.

Chapman Township employees Beth Whitty and Doug Rowe were recognized as organizers of this re-dedication.

A century after their deaths, the new monument and re-dedication to PFC Ira Cranmer Keller and CPL Beale Marshall Darby will no doubt serve as a reminder for generations to come of two young men who made the ultimate sacrifice and what they still mean to their community 100 years later.

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