VETERANS BURIED IN THE OKOBOJI CEMETERY

The past year I has been my privilege to work with Mary Thurnhorst (teacher in the Okoboji Middle School) to get classes in the school to place flags on the veterans in the Okoboji Cemetery.There are 170 veterans buried there from the Mexican War to the Vietnam War. We worked with the Okoboji Cemetery Board and the American Legion of Milford. The kids had a ball placing the flags on the graves and we hope it will become a tradition each spring.
In the process of locating the graves of the veterans we discovered three veterans that had no stone or marker. We have been trying to work through the Veterans Administration but they insist we can only obtain a plaque requested by family. One of the veterans has family but two we find no relatives in the area.
The veteran of the Mexican War (1845) is Christopher Davison. He was born in 1810 and died in 1890. Buried beside him are his wife Margaret Davison and we assume a brother C.D. Davison. The two from the Civil War are David F. Lombard and .Dr.Edward Ridgeway Hutchins who was in the Civil War and the Spanish American War. I have military records for David Lombard and Edward Hutchins for the Civil War.
 I am still researching the military records for Christopher Davison. In his obituary it stated that he was in the company led by General Longstreet.(only a Lt. at first but advanced in rank and became one General Lee's great generals in the Confederacy) If that is true then we assume that David Lombard was in the same battles.The problem is that he was 30 years old at the time of the Mexican War so that is probably a question although many soldiers in the Mexican War were volunteers from various states. We think Christopher was living in Wisconsin at the time of the war. He was born in England and came over here as a young man. We hope we can obtain grave stones for these veterans.

We are back in Mesa. AZ. The trip to here was rewarding. We stopped at our grandson Max and Katrina Lafoy in Kansas City. They are expecting a girl in the middle of October. She will be our first great granddaughter. From ther we drove to Junction City, KS and stayed the night the to Hays, KS to see our grat friends Mike and Lea Carmichael. They used to live in Leisure World but moved to Hays several years ago. They always want us to stop and stay 2 nights but Mike had a stroke about a week before we came so stayed only one night Drove then to Grants, NM and finally to Mesa on Tuesday. It was 100 degrees whe we pulled into our home 210 Leisure World. Unpacked the van and settled in. It is now Sunday and back to the old grind. Church this a.m. then breakfast with friends and loafed around Sunday. The following week will be full. Having Sun belt coming on Tuesday to do work on bathroom and bedroom. Will be torn up for a month or more.
The summer was fast-wrote 15 artilces for the Okobojian, two talks to Kiwanis, talk to 6th graders at Spirit Lake and had a Cemetery walk in the Okoboji Cemetery. Earlier had a Power Point program about Okoboji Cemetery to 5th graders at Okoboji Middle School and got them to put out flags on veterans graves on Memorial Day. There are 175 veterans there and also working on getting stones for 3 vets with no stone.Played gold about every Thursday and took care of the dinners for the Swingers. Golf group. We went to White Bear Lake two times for graduations and birthdays.  We enjoy our townhouse on Emerald Hills Golf Course. We had some health problems bu mostly skin cancer. Enough for now. Will put some of my Memory Lane articles in the blog.