Reporting by Wayne Ford, Athens Banner-Herald
Bill Thomas recently described the day he received a phone call from a friend with a military background who was researching his family history and was seeking a favor.
The man lived out of state and asked Thomas, a member of the American Legion Post 20 in Athens, to find the grave of a family ancestor who was in World War I. That soldier was buried in Oconee Hill Cemetery, and he wanted a photo of the grave.
During the search, Thomas discovered the cemetery actually had a monument to the soldiers who fought in WWI.
“I came across a reference to a World War I monument. I had never seen it,” the Athens resident said.
But Thomas was able to locate it in the historic cemetery that has an entrance just outside Sanford Stadium, the football arena for the University of Georgia.
The monument honors 16 men with Clarke County ties who died during the war. It was erected in May 1925, so it reflected the dark, textured patina of a century.
Thomas tried to clean the bronze marker attached to the granite base to no avail. But he said Billy Willoughby, a longtime employee at Oconee Hill, offered his help.
“He took it to his shop and sandblasted it, repainted it, then hand-sanded the letters and put gold paint on. It looks like it’s brand new. It looks like it did 100 years ago,” Thomas said.
Thomas also researched the names on the monument.
“There are a lot who died from diseases and accidents. One of the guys didn’t even get out of Georgia. He died at Fort Oglethorpe from pneumonia,” he said. One soldier died in a plane crash in England.
“They died serving their country one way or the other,” said Thomas, who retired from a career with the Army National Guard in 2001.
Here are the names included on the Athens WWI monument
- Chester Price Adair. A private in Commissary Unit No. 17, who died of pneumonia in a hospital in Toul, France, in 1918. Adair’s body was returned to the U.S. in February 1921 for burial at Oconee Hill. The body was laid in state at the Clarke County Courthouse, then escorted to a church service, then buried at the cemetery by a company of University of Georgia cadets.
- Eddie Hampton Bugg. He was killed in action on Nov. 2, 1918, at the Battle of Argonne in France only 16 days before the war ended. He was a member of the 82nd Division. His body was also returned in 1921, and he was buried in a family plot in Oglethorpe County in an area near the Oconee River. Hundreds of people attended the funeral, according to the obituary.
- Howell Burnett Cobb. He was a private in the Army who was sent to Fort Oglethorpe for training when, after only two weeks, he contracted pneumonia. He died March 7, 1918, and is buried at Oconee Hills.
- Allen R. Fleming Jr. The Athens native was a U.S. Navy seaman on the USS Manley when, on March 19, 1918, there was an accidental detonation of depth charges on the ship after it collided with a British ship. The explosion killed 34 men. Fleming was blown overboard, and his body was never recovered. He is honored at Brookwood American Cemetery in England and at the monument honoring Clarke County men who fought in the war. Post 20 in Athens is named after him.
- Lt. Robert T. Griffith. A member of the Air Service in the U.S. Army, the Athens native was making a test flight of an airplane at Salisbury, England, when both wings on the plane detached “a considerable distance from the earth.” He was the son of an executive of the Southern Mutual Insurance Co. in Athens and was attending UGA before he enlisted. In a letter to his father, the Army reported: “the machine came down like a shot and was so demolished that the cause of the accident could not be known.”
- Maj. E. Hamond Johnson. A major in the 4th Army Corps, who died of a hemorrhage in May 1919 while in Germany. His body was returned to the U.S. in 1920 for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Johnson was a football player and coach, serving as the head coach at the University of Virginia for one season in 1907. He was head baseball coach at UGA in 1908, where his team finished 20-2. He was married to Anne Phinizy of Athens, who is buried at Oconee Hill.
- Capt. H.L. Jewett Williams. An Episcopal minister and Rhodes Scholar, he died in action on June 9, 1918. A native of Macon, he graduated from UGA. He was 29 when he joined the U.S. Army’s 82nd Infantry Division. He was on an observation tour along the battlefront near Albert, France, when he was killed by a German sharpshooter. He is buried in Oconee Hill. His personal papers are at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at UGA.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald.
