LeROY UTKE

LeRoy Utke was the youngest of eight children who grew up in Russiantown, a portion of Colfax that included the northwest part of town, roughly from about the Perkins House west out toward Green Hollow Road.  The residents there were mainly descendants of Germans who had moved into Russia a few generations back, and then migrated to the Pacific Northwest. 

LeRoy was eleven years old when the war broke out in December of 1941, but he was only in the third grade due to having started school in Idaho.  He was two years behind when he moved to Colfax.  That did put him at an advantage, however, when fights would break out between kids from Russiantown's Martha Washington grade school and the kids from Hamilton up on the hill.  Those fights faded away when all the kids gathered in one high school and were united as Bulldogs.

While LeRoy was too young to serve in World War II - he did his time in Korea a decade later - he has strong recollections of that time in Colfax because of his avid interest in the war and his heroes.  His heroes were his brothers and a sister who joined the military and one who worked on a farm to support the family and the war effort. 

"I believe Colfax was important during that decade because we not only supported the entire military machine by wheat farming, but we also donated Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Pilots, as well as Nurses, Dietitians, and Cooks to the war," Utke stated, then began to list the reasons he felt that way.

His oldest brother, Ernest, enlisted almost immediately when the war started to build in Europe, even before Pearl Harbor.  Ernest, a young kid who was kind of tired of farm work, served two hitches training Artillery Officers in Tennessee.  As a youngster, LeRoy was enthralled by Ernest's tales of having to "round up those Tennessee girls every fall and put shoes on them."

His second oldest brother, Arnold, was the one who decided to accept deferment to work on a farm out in Green Hollow.  He was able to help the war effort in addition to helping his widowed mother provide for the rest of the family.

His next brother, Earl, served in the United States and England, and in France after the invasion of Normandy as a Combat Engineer.  Among other things, he built air fields for fighters and bombers flying out of England.  Earl had held on to dreams of him and his older brother joining the Cavalry.  The brothers had for years dressed in western fashion and jingled around their neighborhood on horseback.  That family cowboy was greatly disappointed when he found out there was no longer a call for horse-mounted soldiers.

Orlan, the next brother in line, served as a US Army Military Policeman on Okinawa and during the American occupation of Japan.  One of his duties during the occupation was to dump Japanese-made products into the harbor, as well as all remaining war materials made in the USA.  Many of the Japanese items were collectibles that would be of great value in today's market.  Orlan did liberate a sword for his young brother LeRoy who has since given it to Orlan's son.

Of his three sisters, Leona (Mabe) and Irene (Wagner) worked on the home front while Valda (Cooper) served in the Women's Army Air Corps in both Louisiana and Colorado.  She packaged and shipped supplies to the war front.

None of them were killed or hurt.  Thus the family made a long, enduring contribution to the war.  LeRoy remembers being treated very well at school, like he was something extra special, because his mother had a blue flag in her window with four red stars on it.  LeRoy noted also that all three brothers sent their military allotment home to their mom after receiving a stipend for themselves.  Although they all came home safely, the war still had put an emphasis on that part of LeRoy's young life, one permanently inscribed in his memory.

Part of that impact came through the rationing of gas, meat, sugar, rubber, and leather products like shoes.  Plus, he could not buy fire arms or ammo, a difficult thing for a new hunter around eleven years old, as well as for all the hunters in Whitman County.  The local hardware store received only one case of shells for the whole hunting season.  The owner of the store had more friends than shells, so LeRoy knew he wasn't going to be able to hunt ducks for a long time.  Then, he learned a man he knew, a man well-known in town, had a case of Peters shells under his bed.  Young LeRoy cut a deal with him.  He was to get one box of shells for every five ducks he brought home to that man. 

"I could get more than five ducks with one shot if I shot well," LeRoy chuckled.  The deal held all through the war years, helping him provide food for his family in the bargain.

Hitch-hiking was really popular during the war, since servicemen averaged about thirty-six dollars per month.  The city of Colfax built a shelter just across the river on the highway to Walla Walla where the propane tanks and gas pumps now stand near the junction to the old Green Hollow Road.  The building, which held about ten people comfortably, had a peaked roof and benches inside where military personnel could sit and wait for a ride.  People would watch the little building to see if anyone needed transportation.  No matter how many people were in the car, they would jam in as many as they could.  In Colfax, no one had to wait long for a ride.

Across the road from that ride building, a jungle-like field where Les Schwab Tires and Napa Parts now stand provided shelter for two hundred and fifty Army men who moved through the area headed for Spokane.  They set up camp for one night, then entertained townsfolk who brought them food and just dropped by to shake hands with them.  The next day the kids from Russiantown searched the area looking for souvenirs and found things such as packets of powdered coffee which they treasured for years to come.

Spokane was, at that time, an Air Force hub of activity.  When  LeRoy was about fifteen, he recalls, school would let out so the kids and teachers could watch fly-overs.  Maybe thirty or forty groups of Bombers and their fighter escorts flew formation over the town during 1945, a constant source of enjoyment for LeRoy and the other kids.  The P-47 Fighter was developed mostly in the Spokane area and many of them flew around Whitman County for several years.  The last flights he saw before the war ended were P-47s escorting bombers. 

Mayor Burns' son, Bill Burns, was a fighter pilot who most people living and working in town at that time remember very well.  Bill, stationed in Spokane, provided a big thrill for the local folks by making a two-way pass up and down Main street in his P-51 each time he was in the air.  Even though his commanding officer suggested he knock it off, the flights continued entertaining the kids, and adults, in Colfax.

LeRoy remembers the day he heard Dorothy Stanke, an Army Corps Nurse stationed on Okinawa, was killed by a Kamikaze plane that hit her hospital ship.  What embedded it in his mind was the story that went around town resulting from her death.  There was a religious group that used to hold war protests, parading in town using very harsh language like, "We hope your kids get killed in the war."  The day after the hospital ship was hit they scheduled a protest.  Some local citizens, offended by their words, gave them a "severe shellacking" leaving them the worse for wear in the gutter.

As the story went, a policeman walked by, looked at the protesters in the gutter, nodded at them, said, "Nice day!" and strolled off down the street.

In a more supportive vein, nearly all the kids in town saved whatever change they could and bought savings stamps.  They kept their savings book from grade to grade until they had accumulated seventeen dollars and fifty cents in stamps, then they would buy a War Bond that was worth twenty-five dollars at maturity, five years later.  The kids at Martha Washington School, but not Hamilton on the hill as LeRoy pointed out, were also let out of school on a regular basis to collect metal, paper, and rubber.  They took those items to a central place in town, located where the Nazarene Church and parking lot now stand.  It was then a motel-type business, made up of little log cabins, called Ripley's, Believe It or Not. 

Billboards were popular in those days, many of which were used for promotion of war themes, like urging people to "Buy Bonds!"  Whenever such a billboard would appear with Hitler or Tojo's picture on them to identify the common enemy, the Russiantown kids, frequently led by one LeRoy Utke, would obscure their faces with mud. 

"It was great recreation," laughed LeRoy.  "Oh, we had fun doing that."

"It was hard for people to make a living," Utke said, growing more serious.  "They couldn't farm the way they had.  Gas, rubber, and parts were all scarce.  But we managed.  We wanted to help our armed forces win the war."

When that war was over, and the Korean War was past, LeRoy married Wilma Gering, a Bulldog classmate, and they had two sons.  LeRoy worked for Whitman County Engineers and Wilma worked in the telephone office that used to be in Colfax, then one of the banks, and then cooked lunch for school kids until she retired.