By Audrey Crook, Bessie Hatten & Nancy Nance

A faded poster entitled "Pray for Our Boys in the Service" was found in a closet at the Marietta School about the time America was celebrating the fiftieth (50th) anniversary of the end of World War II ("WWII"). Although the ink was dimming, the names carefully copied on the lines had survived as a reminder of the time they hung on the wall of the little red brick eight-room schoolhouse at Marietta. Looking at the poster, and recognizing some of the names, it was easy to let your mind wander back to what it must have been like there in the 1940's and how much we owed those young men. A similar poster probably hung in the Bethlehem School, then attended by black students, but that school has since been torn down and documents that might have related to its students in WWII were not saved.

During the WWII years, the school at Marietta (consisting of grades 1-10) was attended by students from Marietta, Cornett, Dalton, and Bryans Mill in Cass County, with grades 11-12 going to nearby Naples in Morris County. Although Naples is in Morris County, it is impossible to separate it from the northwestern corner of Cass County, either geographically or socially, primarily due to the school situation. Residents know each other, shop in the same stores, read the same newspaper, use the same doctors, eat in the same cafés, support the same teams, etc. Also, marriages between citizens of these communities over the years have resulted in a lot of people in the towns being related. So, people were aware Naples had displayed a listing of WWII Vets at the 1995 Watermelon Festival, which generated a lot of interest and contained the names of several Cass County veterans who had attended Naples High School. With these factors as background, and the fact that the Marietta Community Association was planning to honor WWII Veterans at its upcoming Fall Fun Food Fest, the idea for a Marietta Area WWII Listing was born.

Audrey Crook and Bessie Hatten (lifetime residents of Marietta and Bethlehem) started talking to people and jotting down data, and they recruited Nancy Nance (a Marietta native who had compiled the Naples Watermelon Festival List) to help. However, THE INFORMATION ON THE LIST CAME FROM THE HEARTS AND MEMORIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IT. Much of it was from girls who wrote letters to friends in the service or simply remembered the type of uniform service men and women wore when home on furlough. As the list developed, those working on it were astonished at its magnitude, and could see that WWII had affected every family in our little corner of Cass County in one way or another. It was also amazing to see how people from such a tiny rural area--many who had never been out of the piney woods of East Texas--spread around the globe to previously unheard of places like Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Burma, Omaha Beach, Guam, Okinawa, Normandy, Japan, Germany and the Atlantic & Pacific Theaters. It was heart breaking to add the awful initials "POW" and the lines in bold print indicating the five area soldiers who died. And, we heard stories--sad, happy, funny, inspiring, almost unbelievable stories--about honorable, courageous Cass County service men and women and their families. In fact, we (and those remembering the people and events) even shed a few tears before the list was finished.

This List in no way attempts to be an official and/or complete source. It was simply a way to honor those that served in WWII from our area. If anyone was omitted that should have been listed, it was merely an oversight. The list was on display at the October 1995 Fall Fun Food Fest in Marietta, where WWII Vets were honored on the podium and many participated in the parade, and it was viewed by numerous people who had the opportunity to make changes/corrections. It should be noted that several more of the veterans have died since 1995, but the List has not been updated to reflect that deceased information.

We heard how, during WWII, families hung a star in their window to remind people that a member of their family was serving in the military, and we hope this list will be a star in the hearts of area residents as we remember and honor our Cass County WWII veterans from Marietta, Cornett, Dalton and Bryans Mill.