08/29/2026
In an attempt to resurrect the practice of Bruce Guy who, before his untimely passing, regularly posted articles about some of our Gladwin County service members. We owe a debt of gratitude for these young people who interrupted their lives - and in many cases gave their lives - for the cause of defending the peace of the nation and the world. I clearly understand that "defending the peace" might be a strange way of phrasing it, since many served in times of war. But we must understand that, often, fighting a war is the only way to re-establish peace.
Anyway - Since I just finished restoring a photo of H. Clark Hastings, a young sailor from Grout Township who signed up for the Navy during what we now call World War I. While he was in training, he did fall into an often-deadly reality of over-crowded camps and heavy workloads that helped to spread the world-wide scourge of the time - pneumonia. In fact, the pneumonia often turned out to be the cause of death listed before we learned that the cause of the pneumonia was the Spanish Flu.
The attached transcriptions include notes that were published in the Gladwin County Record, and communications from our service members. The publication date is noted at the end of each article.
