LUMBERTON — On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 100 years after the armistice ending World War I was signed, a service of remembrance was held Sunday morning under a live oak tree in the garden of the Proctor Law Office in Lumberton.
The Veterans Day event was sponsored by the Disabled American Veterans Lumberton Chapter 7, the Robeson Historical Society and the Daughters of the American Revolution. The date for Veterans Day, which initially was known as Armistice Day, was set on the day and month of the signing of the truce.
DAV member George Brisson delivered the keynote address in which he paraphrased George Washington, who once said veterans are owed just as much now as they were then, when they fought for our freedom.
“That sums up the Disabled American Veterans mission,” Brisson said. “This is a day of honor and a day of honor for veterans.”
Colleen Brown, president of the Robeson Historical Society and a local historian, said 71 Robeson County residents died on World War I battlefields. Among them was Fairmont resident George Galloway, who was the first North Carolinian to fall in the war.
“Lumberton had a huge celebration at the news of the armistice, with every church ringing its bell,” Brown said. “The Robesonian printed the names of the 71 dead in 1919 and again in 1939 when a plaque was dedicated and installed in the courthouse with all the names on it.”
The names have always been listed by race, and when the names were read during the service Sunday, they were read that way. Mayme Tubbs, representing the Daughters of the American Revolution, rang a bell after each name.
The South Robeson High School’s JROTC Color Guard posted the colors. Wyatt Johnson, a Korean War veteran and former Lumberton city councilman, gave closing remarks.
There were 17 million people who died in World War I, which was dubbed the “war to end all wars.” Of those, about 117,000 were Americans.
Here are the names of the World War I dead from Robeson County:
— African American: Arthur Rozier, Zeddie Robeson, Robert Burton, Eddie Smith, Marshall Pittman, Lacy H. McCallum, Val Pierce, Jasper J. Elliot, Fred G. Gillis, and James McNeil.
— American Indian: Ellis Hardin, Calvin B. Lowery, William R. Oxendine, Preston Locklear, Harvey Oxendine, Winslow Locklear, Addinal H. Lockey, Golden Oxendine, Lonnie Hunt, Garfield Lowery, Jake Edwards, W.R. Oxendine, and Lonnie W. Hammonds.
— White: George E. Galloway, Charles Hall, Carson Chason, Donnie Sutton, Edgar Lovette, Coy Britt, E. Lathrop Austin, Murdoc McRea, Alva Ivey, Benjamin Carter, Marvin J. Odum, Ed J. Pope, George Lawson, John H. Walker, Sam McLaughlin, Duncan G. Shaw, Joseph Shaw, John A. McLean, Alfred Oliver, Herbert Watson, James Collins, Daniel March, Lonnie Proctor, Casper Stone, Henry L. Straughn, George E. McDowell, Daniel W. Fowler, Carson. A. West, Henry Bahr, Edwin V. Johnson, O.B. O’Brien, D.B. Purcell, Edmund Britt, Walter Beasley, Martin L. Stuart, Lloyd Pittman, G.H. Marsh, Gus Norton, E.W. Britt, Atlas Johnson, James E. Smith, William S. Hyatt, Archie Gillespie, Ellis Tyner, Raymond Evers, Fred Gillis, Willis Allen Lee, Archie McLaughlin, E. Dawson Bullock and Claud E. Phillips.
