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Looking Back 1941

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The British Invade catoctin mountain

by James Rada, Jr.

In the spring of 1941, the U.S. had yet to enter World War II, but other countries had been fighting for two years. Germany showed early dominance in the war, and it hadn’t been going well for the British Royal Navy. It had lost more than 55 ships and 18,000 men. Those who remained were exhausted.

“British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed the United States for desperately needed aid,” according to K.C. Clay in the report, “Rest Camp: A Report on the WWII Use of Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area by the Royal Navy.” “Pushing to the edge of US neutrality, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought ways of helping the British.”

During March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which allowed the U.S. to aid the Allied nations with food, oil, and material. It was given free of charge, but it could only be given if the help was essential for the defense of the United States.

Under this act, the U.S. was able to justify repairing damaged Royal Navy ships. While the ships were in port, the crews went ashore to recuperate from the stress of combat.

The Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area on Catoctin Mountain was one of seven National Park Service sites that provided rest camps for the Royal Navy sailors. This pre-war U.S. aid to the Allies is largely unknown.

Clay, a National Park Service historian, identified four ships whose crews visited Catoctin Mountain. These were the H.M.S. Southern Prince, H.M.S. Bulolo, H.M.S. Menestheus, and H.M.S. Agamemnon.

During June, 150 sailors stayed at Camp Greentop in two groups of 75 men. Each group stayed for a week, enjoying swimming and other sports activities. Other sailors stayed at the Short Term Lodge, which the National Park Service had acquired after Bessie Darling was killed in the house in 1933. It was a 12-room boarding house with three indoor bathrooms.

“CRDA canceled visitor reservations for the summer of 1941 and configured the house to accommodate the sailors,” Clay wrote.

The largest group consisted of 85 sailors. In all, five groups of sailors stayed there averaging 56 men in each group.

The third site where Royal Navy sailors stayed was Hi-Catoctin. Two groups of sailors stayed there with an average size of 99 men.

As with just about everything that happened on the mountain which was supposed to be a secret, the truth was known to local residents.

“Although the British Ministry of Defense and the US War Department did not publicly acknowledge the presence of the sailors in the U.S., the residents of Frederick County were aware of them and extended invites to multiple social engagements,” Clay wrote. “National Park Service employees also provided social functions such as hot dog roasts and dances. To some of the war weary sailors, the Americans seemed over compensating for not being engaged in the conflict.”

This is not to say the British didn’t appreciate the efforts on their behalf. They repaid the kindness by putting on exhibition cricket and rugby matches for visitors to the park. They taught British songs, dances, and dialects to their hosts.

“Some sailors got on so well with the Americans that they married them,” Clay wrote.

Despite the camaraderie between the Americans and British, the British Admiralty had ordered the sailors not to talk about their assigned ship names, combat engagements, area of operation, and “any information that could possibly be used by the Nazis against them.”

The Nazis had sympathizers among the Americans who might have passed that information on.

Although locals knew of the Royal Navy presence, the U.S. media and the British press did not report on it until the U.S. Navy announced it on September 19, 1941.

After the successful 1941 season, plans were made for 1942, such as adding a telephone booth the sailors could use. However, the second season never happened because the U.S. entered the war and needed to use the facilities for its own purposes. It eventually served as a training camp for OSS agents and a rest camp for U.S. Marines.

Clay wrote that the rest camp story “is about the men who spent two years on alert for Nazi U-boats getting a week respite in the woods far inland from coastal waters. Some men arrived already decorated for valor. Others would go on to perform heroic actions. A few would sacrifice all within weeks of departing the camp.”

In total, more than 21,000 British sailors enjoyed a respite from the war on American soil, although only around 630 of them visited Catoctin.

Picture shows a British sailor relaxing in a cabin on Catoctin Mountain during WWII.

Courtesy of the National Park Service

Veteran Spotlight

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Raymond Sanders

by Deb Abraham Spalding and James Rada, Jr.

Photo by Richard L. Dougan, Jr.

When Raymond Sanders first came to Sabillasville, it was because his family was growing and they needed space to expand. They found a two-story home at the end of a dead-end road and set down roots.

“It’s a nice place to live”, Sanders said. “The dead end road was good for the children, and my wife’s father and stepmother lived nearby.”

His children started attend Sabillasville School when it was still in the building that is now Walkersville Christian Fellowship Church. At that time, local students up to grade six all fit into a four room school. For high school, the students were bussed down the mountain to Thurmont High.

“I didn’t worry about them going down to Thurmont,” Sanders said. “People were careful on the road, and there were no accidents.”

Sanders was born December 11, 1923, in Iron Springs, Pennsylvania. He is one of eight children to Lloyd and Ruth Gertrude Riley Sanders. His family moved to Fountaindale, Pennsylvania, when he was six. From there, they would eventually move to Charmain, Pennsylvania, and Highfield, Maryland.

Although his military service would take him far from Catoctin Mountain, all of his homes are no more than a 10-mile round trip.

“I’ve been working since the time I was twelve,” Sanders said.

His early work was with Mr. Leisinger on a huckster truck hauling and selling vegetables, but he has also been a fruit picker, worked at the pipe and nipple factory, Landis Machine, and Frick Company. His longest lasting job was as a heavy engineer equipment mechanic at Fort Ritchie. He worked there for 22 years, retiring in 1975 because off a back injury. He said, “They wouldn’t give me another job and I couldn’t work anymore because I couldn’t pull wrenches.”

Instead, he wound up retiring at age 52. He was also a member of the Maryland National Guard and was able to continue his service for five more years before he needed to retire from that as well. Together, his service in the National Guard and in the Army, Sanders served 33 years in the military.

Sanders is also a Veteran of World War II. He was never drafted. His son, Larry, explained. “He didn’t get called up for the draft while his friends and brothers were being called. His mom took him to Hagerstown to ask why and they couldn’t find his records. Turns out he was in the dead file – they would never have called him up.”

He enlisted in the Army on March 18, 1943, and trained with the 8th Armored Division. However, when he shipped out to Europe, he was sent as part of the green troops, being sent to replace the soldiers who were dying in the war. Once in Europe, though, he never saw combat. “I was close to being called up a couple of times, but it never happened,” said Sanders.

He mustered out after three years and returned home, which at the time, was in Highfield. About his service, he said, “It has done me a wonderful good.”

The following year, he “really met” Betty Jane Fox. He had first met her when she was 10 and he was 15, but that was just in passing because he was friends with the boys in her family. 

Sanders was in Waynesboro one time with Betty Jane’s uncle, when her uncle tried to convince Sanders to come to Frederick with him to a dance. Sanders wanted to go, but said he didn’t have a date. Betty Jane’s uncle then fixed her up with Sanders and the two hit it off. They were married on September 13, 1947.

Together, they raised seven children (Debbie, Rita, Becky, Larry, Mary, David, and Jim), and one grandson (Jeffrey). They also have 12 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, 1 great-great grandchild, 2 step-grandchildren, 5 step-great-grandchildren, and 5 step-great-great-grandchildren.

“When we had family picnics, we would have 45 to 80 people show up,” Sanders said.

Raymond tells a humorous story about delivering a bowling ball to his grandson, Jeffrey, who was stationed in Germany while in the military. Jeffrey told Raymond that he could bowl a better game if he had his own bowling ball from home. Raymond hopped a military transport plane in Dover, Delaware, and flew to Jeffrey with the bowling ball. Raymond said, “Oh, he was surprised!”

Raymond has always enjoyed living in Sabillasville and says that he has pretty much anything he might need nearby. He attends church at St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Blue Ridge Summit. He belongs to the Cascade American Legion, Waynesboro VFW, and Knights of Columbus.

“I think we have the nicest people that any community could have up here,” expressed Sanders. “They make great neighbors.”

Betty Jane passed away in 2016, and while Sanders now lives alone, he still has plenty of family looking out for him and plenty of memories.

He clearly remembers, “I have a good family and I’ve had a good life!”

Raymond was honored at a recent Veteran’s event at the Cascade American Legion where he was a founding member. Following his military service in addition to Jeffrey, mentioned above, are three grandchildren who are also war Veterans. Raymond was the recipient of the Legionaires Award at the Veteran’s Day event at the Cascade American Legion

Veteran Spotlight

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by Priscilla Rall

WWII Thurmont Nurse Follows Troops: Part 3

We continue with the story of Army nurse Mary Catherine Willhide as she nursed wounded American soldiers after the Battle of the Bulge. While stationed in Malmedy in Germany, Mary endured the explosions from German bombs for months in late 1944.

She was on night duty on December 16, sitting near a stove as she wrote a letter home. A bomb hit so close that it knocked the pen out of her hand. This is how she found herself in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.

According to Mary, “you couldn’t hear anything for the terrible explosions…one knocked out the corner of one of our buildings. About a dozen people were killed in Malmedy about a half-mile away.” On December 17 at breakfast, the colonel told the nurses that paratroopers had dropped between Malmedy and Eupen, 30 miles away. There was to be a counterattack, but no orders had been received so far.

Around noon, infantry troops began jumping out of trucks right at the hospital’s front gate! Mary could hear the fire of small arms in the direction of Malmedy. At three in the morning, a nurse tore into Mary’s room to tell her that there was fighting in the streets of Malmedy and there was to be an emergency nurses’ meeting.

For the next two days, the casualties were heavy and her hospital had nearly 300 patients. Then, Mary noticed a very unsettling activity. All the traffic was now in reverse, including the tanks!

The nurses’ meeting took all of three minutes! The hospital staff was ordered to pack, and Mary wisely dressed as warmly as she could. Fifteen minutes later, they got the word that they were to be evacuated, and the colonel asked for five volunteers to remain at the hospital. Apparently, there were no orders from headquarters, as there was another hospital in Malmedy and no nurses were left behind when they evacuated. The patients were being evacuated as far as possible in “trucks, ambulances, or anything we could get.”

As luck would have it, all nine of the trucks assigned to Mary’s hospital were still there. Forty nurses were placed in one truck. In the afternoon, the nurses from the field hospital at Waimes arrived with a harrowing tale to tell. They had just gotten out ahead of the Germans. Apparently, Mary’s headquarters had called the corps commander four times before they were given the order to evacuate. Mary wryly noted that if they had been told on the morning of the 17th, they would have had time to pack up all of the valuable hospital equipment. Unfortunately, they had to leave all of their medical equipment behind with seven enlisted men and one officer as guards. They worked through the night and had everything packed by 6:00 a.m. on the last truck, also carrying the last load of patients. According to a letter sent to her parents, Lt. Willhide was forced to move three times in one night during the worst of the Battle of the Bulge.

“Fortunately an engineer battalion held the Jerrys back after they had orders to retreat,” Mary wrote. An infantry division and an armored division had already started from above Aachen, but they didn’t arrive until Sunday afternoon and the rest the next day. It was too late. According to Mary, that was the trouble. If they took our troops out of the Aachen area, then the enemy could break through there. “In other words, we were biting off more than we could chew.”

Soon, the British moved into Aachen and the U.S. brought our troops south. According to Mary, “it was the airplanes that defeated the Germans who didn’t have enough support, and the Americans tore up their supply lines.”

A colonel from headquarters came and asked for three volunteers to come with him. Of course, Mary volunteered! She claims that the nurses weren’t too scared until the colonel asked them if the German strafed their jeep, could they make it to the gutter! “We said, brother, you won’t have to tell us more than once!”

He took them to Spa, Belgium, just 10 miles from Malmedy. They met the rest of the unit there. The main drive was towards Stavelot, Belgium, and then further south through St. Vith toward Bastogne. On Monday, December 18, we moved again to Hartze “where we had our closest call.” They stayed there just one night as the battle raged on only 10 miles east of them. Luckily, they moved out just two hours before the Germans took the place. “Thank God we were always just a jump ahead of them.” She realized just how fortunate they were when she saw the ragged and starving POWs from the concentration camps. On the 19th, they moved to Huij, Belgium, where they helped the 102 Evacuation Hospital, which was inundated with the wounded. “It was like Normandy all over again.”

Although Lt. Willhide doesn’t mention it in her letter, she received the Bronze Star with a citation for meritorious service on January 4, 1945. The citation reads “For meritorious service in connection with military operations as an anesthetist, 67th Evacuation Hospital, semimobile from 17 June 1944 to 27 November 1944 in France, Luxembourg and Belgium.”

Then, most of the hospital staff went on to Namur, where the Germans made their deepest penetration. Mary stayed there until January 7 and then went on to the 51st Field Hospital. From there, she went to Duren, which was in complete ruins. It took the men three days to clean it out. “There were dead Germans in the cellar and in the attic where they were housed.”

On March 25, Mary moved to Bonn, where she stayed at the Pathological Institute by the Rhine River. Next stop, Huborn, the next largest hospital since St. Mere Eglise. There, they cared for 30 Russians, all with head injuries. “If you ever saw a mess, that was it. No one spoke Russian, and they were afraid of us and wouldn’t stay on the operating room table, so I put them to sleep on the run!”

On May 4, they moved to Bayreuth, Bavaria, 280 miles by truck, taking 12 hours.

Mary went through Frankfort to Nuremberg, where she saw Hitler’s Stadium. Finally, the long-awaited V-E Day came. But there was still work for Mary. She moved to Marienbad, Czechoslovakia, a lovely resort town, where they set up yet another hospital on June 1. As time went on, Mary noticed that the Germans were less hostile towards the Americans. “Never have I seen a more bedraggled, dirty, sullen people than the German soldiers, who were all along the road. They were walking, riding in horse-drawn vehicles, trucks, and every imaginable mode of travel.” They had thrown the dice and lost.

Now Capt. Willhide, Mary Catherine finished out her tour of duty and then served in the Maryland State Department of Health. She died on February 15, 2001, at her home on Flanagan Road and is buried in Weller’s Cemetery in Thurmont.

Rare Genetic Disease Runs Through Some Central Maryland Families

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James Rada, Jr.

Families can pass along many traits through the generations. Eye color, facial structure, even a propensity to bear twins. Unfortunately, they can also pass along diseases.

Sue Clabaugh’s family has been in the Thurmont area for hundreds of years. One line of her family tree goes back to John Jost of Wittgenstein, Germany. It is through his line that a genetic disorder called hATTR amyloidosis has been passed. It is also known as “Eigenbrode Disease,” named for descendants of Jost, who are also part of Clabaugh’s family tree. It is a mutation in the transthyretin gene that causes misfolded proteins that accumulate in tissues around the nerves, gastrointestinal tract, and heart. There is no known cure.

“Many people, including doctors, have never heard of it or ignore it,” Clabaugh said. “I know I have a lot of relatives in areas who don’t know testing is free.”

She was diagnosed with the disease only seven months ago at age seventy-three. “It started with a horrible burning in my feet. Then I would get sharp pains at night that would go up my legs.”

The symptoms vary from person to person, but once they appear, they generally continue growing worse. Although it tends to strike senior citizens, Clabaugh has met people as young as thirty with the disease.

Her brother, Bill Eyler, was diagnosed five years ago. “Now he’s sixty-eight and in leg braces because he has no feeling in his legs,” Clabaugh said.

While there are some treatments available, they aren’t always effective. Once Clabaugh realized what the disease was, she remembered seeing family members at family reunions as a child. She thought even then that a lot of them had trouble walking or were in wheelchairs.

“I had no idea that it was amyloidosis until I became a nurse,” she said. “Even then, I never thought I would be on that list.”

Her father died at age fifty-six. “He used to have to change gears with one hand and push with the other because he had no feeling in his fingers,” Clabaugh said. Because the disease isn’t common, it is often misdiagnosed as neuropathy or lime disease. However, Clabaugh urges anyone in Central Maryland with those symptoms to be tested for hATTR amyloidosis. Some of the family names that have members with amyloidosis include Smith, Boyle, Munshouer, Martin, Fitz, Scott, and Eyler. The testing is free, and you can find out more information at www.alnylam.com.

Since being diagnosed with the disease, Clabaugh has been trying to learn all she can about it and get the word out to raise awareness about it.

“If I reach one person with this information and they pass it on, and they get some help, it would mean so much to me,” expressed Clabaugh.

She also wants doctors to be aware of how the disease manifests, because many of them aren’t aware of it. Doctors should be asking patients with foot, leg, or hand problems if other people in their family have the same problem. If so, then consider the possibility that it might be hATTR amyloidosis.

Our Neighborhood Veterans

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Pfc. James Aubrey Houck

On January 1, 1923, a New Year’s baby arrived in Johnsville, Maryland. The new baby boy was delivered at home on the farm his parents owned and operated. He was named James Aubrey, and his parents were Roy Walter and Mary (Blessing) Houck. His mother gave him the name Aubrey, because she had gone to a movie and that was the star’s name. She liked the movie so much that she said that was going to be her next boy’s name.

Aubrey grew up helping on the farm and playing with his three brothers and one sister. He really liked feeding and riding the horses, but he wasn’t fond of milking the cows. Of course, he made the best of it all, because he really wasn’t one to complain. The field work was done mostly by horse and hand back then. The most modern piece of machinery the family owned was a thrashing machine.

Aubrey had to cut corn with a sickle and shock it; later, he would come around with the horses and wagon and load it all by hand. The hay was also done mostly by hand, except for the sickle bar mower that was horse-drawn. The hay, after drying, was loaded on the wagons with long pitch forks. When the hay arrived at the barn, it was unloaded and put in the mows by a very large cradle fork that was tied to a large rope, run through a block and hooked to the horses by a singletree and lifted to the hay mow.

Aubrey grew up working and playing on the farm and going to school at Elmer Wolf School in Union Bridge. He was old enough to drive his father’s car by 1939, and his dad would lend him the car so that he and his brothers could go to the local fire hall dances. That is where he met Mary Jean Wantz. They started dating, fell in love, and got married. Shortly after their marriage, Aubrey was drafted into the Army Air Force to fight for our country until the war was over, or our President said he could come home.

Aubrey was only in the service for a short time when he got word that Jeanie (that’s what he called his wife) was pregnant with his child. He was trained as a mechanic and worked on airplanes. He was then sent to Germany and fought in the infantry. Aubrey kept in touch with Jeanie by writing her when he had the chance and reading her letters from home. His son was more than two years old when he stepped off the train and saw him for the very first time. Aubrey and Jeanie lived with her parents for a while after he returned from the war, and he went to work at the Fairchild Airplane Plant. Jeanie’s father worked as a mechanic for the Emmitsburg Railroad Company. One day Jeanie’s father went for a walk in the woods behind his house. He was gone longer than usual, so someone went to see what was taking him so long. He was found sitting on a rock where he had passed away from a heart attack. Shortly thereafter, Aubrey moved his family, including his mother-in-law, to Hunt Valley, Maryland, where he began working for Shawan Farms. Shawan Farms consisted of around three thousand acres, owned by the Miller family. Aubrey began driving a team of mules to do farm work. Aubrey and Jeanie had two more children while there.

The family eventually moved to Taneytown, Maryland, to the Bob Bankert farm and took over the farming for the rent of the house. Aubrey also got a job working at the Cambridge Rubber company making rubber boots. While living and working there, they had another child, bringing the total to four. The oldest son was six years old now, having been born in 1943, and was in first grade. He helped on the farm by putting the automatic milkers together, so that when his dad got off work, he could go right to the barn and start milking. Aubrey was very good at operating heavy equipment while in the army. So, when he heard of a job opening operating a horse drawn grader, and about the money they were paying to operate it, he jumped at the chance.

He moved the family back to Emmitsburg, where he would reside for the rest of his life. Aubrey was a member of VFW Post 6658 in Emmitsburg, American Legion Post 121 in Emmitsburg, and the Indian Lookout Conservation Club. Aubrey and Jeanie finished their family with another son, making the total of children four boys and one girl—the same as his mother and dad. He built a house along the Waynesboro Pike, just one mile outside of Emmitsburg. It seemed there was always someone there for him to work on their vehicle (trucks, cars, and even tractors) and he would not accept anything for it. He would always say, “Maybe I’ll need something some day and then you can pay me back,” but everyone knew he wouldn’t accept anything.

Aubrey had a mild heart attack and the doctors said he should think about slowing down. So, after operating heavy equipment for Hempt Bros. Road construction for over thirty years, he retired. He had another heart attack, and was recuperating to have surgery, when he suffered a massive heart attack. On April 15, 1980, he passed away at fifty-seven years of age, in the CCU of Gettysburg Hospital. His mother had passed in January and his sister in February of the same year.

I am sure by now you know that I am writing about my father (some of you called him Orby, some called him Orvy; he would smile, but he never corrected anyone). I can’t remember ever hearing him say anything bad about anyone. He was the hardest working, kindest, and most giving man I have ever met. I am sure if you had the good fortune of meeting him, you would be in complete agreement. You became his friend instantly upon meeting him.

I didn’t write much about his time in the service during WWII. He never spoke much about it, and when you mentioned something about it to him, he would just smile and change the subject. I do know that he was proud to fight for our freedom and was very patriotic, and that’s enough for me.

God Bless America, God Bless the American Veteran, and God Bless You.

James Aubrey Houck

Holocaust Survivor Shares His Story with Catoctin Students

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James Rada, Jr.

As an eighty-five-year-old man, it wouldn’t seem that Mark Strauss would be able to relate to modern teenagers. However, when he recently sat down before a group of students at Catoctin High School, Strauss didn’t tell them about his adulthood. He took them all the way back to 1941, when he was just a boy of eleven, living in Lvov, Poland.

“I was hunted to be killed, and almost my entire family and community were,” said Strauss.

He lived in a small three-room apartment with his parents and grandparents. When World War II started, his town came under control of the Soviet Union; however, in 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union and took control of Poland.

Strauss watched the German army roll into his town in their tanks and troop transports. The soldiers were all in high spirits, which shouldn’t be surprising since they were winning the war.

Yet, the next day, problems began. Strauss was walking on the street when he saw a mob of people attack a man and beat him to death.

“Two thousand people, mostly men, were killed in the next couple days,” recalled Strauss. “My uncle went for a walk on the street and never came back. Temples were torched, sometimes with people inside.”

These people were Jews, who made up about one-fifth of the town’s population. The Jewish community lived in fear as soldiers began going door to door, looking for Jewish citizens. Even if a Jewish family lied and said that they weren’t Jewish, there was always the possibility a neighbor would turn them in.

Jews were taken from their homes to be interrogated or simply shot on the street. Others were loaded into a truck and taken to a mass grave outside of the town, where they were shot.

“In one year’s time, almost all the Jews in my town had been murdered,” Strauss said. “My family—thirty to forty people—were killed, except for me and my parents.”

Strauss would hide himself from people to avoid the Nazis on the streets. His grandparents weren’t so lucky. He saw them being taken away, presumably to be killed, since he never saw them again.

Eventually Strauss’s luck ran out when a group of soldiers and local police broke into his family’s apartment. Strauss was there with his mother. His father was working at his job. The local policemen ransacked the apartment, looking for money.

“I was scared, because I knew I was going to die,” Strauss said.

Strauss and his mother probably would have been killed if one of the soldiers hadn’t found a picture of Strauss’s father in his Polish army uniform. The sight of the soldier in the picture changed the man’s mind about what he was doing, and he ordered his men to leave.

The remaining Jews in Lvov were eventually forced into a Jewish ghetto, an area of the city that was far too small a space, even for the few remaining Jews. Strauss and his parents had to share a room with twenty people. There was no greenery, no place to go to the bathroom, and little food and water.

A Catholic woman eventually wound up hiding Strauss in a 10 x 12 room for a year and a half.

“I was in jail, but a jail where you fear you could be executed every day and not just wait out your time,” said Strauss.

A jail it may have been, but it allowed him to survive, as the few remaining Jews in Lvov were killed or died from starvation. He still had little food, but at least he had a certain degree of safety. Strauss said he appreciated the family’s bravery in hiding him since he knew that they could have been killed for hiding him.

Strauss and the other Jews in Lvov were liberated by the Soviet Army in 1944. He moved to New York in 1947. He worked at MIT and became a painter and author. He also shares his story with groups like the students at Catoctin High School so that they can better understand what it was like during the Holocaust, and that something like that never happens again.

Holocaust articleHolocaust Survivor, Mark Strauss, speaks with students at Catoctin High School about his personal experience and what it was like at that time in history.

 

 

Photo by James Rada, Jr.

 

 

mountain talk

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Army Chaplain, Family Man, Pastor, and Artist

by Chris O’Connor

Col. Bill Hammann of Blue Ridge Summit retired in 1999 after two and a half decades in the U.S. Army, where he served as a chaplain, rising through the ranks, ministering to the spiritual needs of American patriots and their families.

His service to our nation spanned the Cold War years, continuing throughout Desert Storm and Desert Shield.  He was stationed in Germany just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall—something he thought would never happen during his lifetime.

He was stationed at bases from Korea to Germany, as well as stateside posts, including Ft. Hood in Texas, Ft. Sill in Oklahoma, Ft. Knox in Kentucky, and the Presidio in California. 

After retirement, he returned to Pennsylvania, because he has family in Carlisle. 

Now he is in what he jokingly calls his “second retirement,” after serving as pastor at Hawley’s Memorial Presbyterian Church in Blue Ridge Summit. The decision to retire didn’t come easily, for he grew to love his congregation over a span of ten years. His family was the main driver of his difficult choice. He and his wife Lucy have a blended brood of six children and ten grandchildren, with whom they want to spend more time.

Though some might question if Bill isn’t already entrenched in a third career, for he has grown quite accomplished in the centuries-old German form of artistic expression called scherenschnitte or “scissors cutting,” brought to our shores by German immigrants who settled mostly in colonial Pennsylvania.

Sherenschnitte—in its simplest form—is most easily described as silhouettes or stencil-like patterns cut from paper. The colonists used them as a means to decorate their homes for things such as shelf liners, doilies, birth and wedding announcements, or other embellishments to enhance the home environment. The colonial style designs were more simplistic by virtue of the available tools of that time. Many sherenschnitte designs, such as heart-shaped ones, predated our modern valentines, with space left in the center for messages penned in calligraphy.

Its modern incarnation is elaborate, intricately detailed works of art depicting a limitless variety of subjects, where the artist is only limited by his or her imagination.

Bill decided to learn the art form following his retirement from the Army in 1999 at the urging of his brother, who had acquired some pieces by other artists. Bill acquired some books and dove right in. 

While many might consider patience the requisite to create such intricate pieces, Bill saw it differently and, in fact, found it relaxing and therapeutic. He had lingering back pain resulting from a Jeep rollover accident that occurred while he was still in the Army, and the pain often left him sleepless. Working on his earliest pieces were painstaking in more ways than one, helping distract him from the discomfort of his injury.

Bill is concerned that scherenschnitte is becoming a lost art. He is proud that some members of his family are continuing in the tradition. He has also held classes at Renfrew and a group at his church.

Anyone with an interest in the art form should start with simple designs and scissors, or Bill’s cutting tool of choice, an X-Acto knife. His best advice is to have an ample supply of sharp blades available.  As soon as the blade begins to pull the paper while cutting, change the blade. 

Besides the paper used for the design and knife blades, supplies are largely minimal.   

Early on, Bill used old catalogs as cutting mats. While it was a creative way to protect the tabletop, it was arguably a false economy since extra layer of catalog pages further dulled the knife blades, not to mention the wee bits of catalog paper that had to be cleaned up.

Chasing infinitesimal bits of catalog pages was something akin to herding cats, sweeping down from a pillow with a hole in it while a ceiling fan’s going, or like raking dry autumn leaves in shifting winds.

Bill is not chasing bits of old catalogs these days. He uses a so-called “self-healing” mat as a base for his paper cutting. The paper rests on its stable surface and protects both the tabletop and also lengthens the life of the cutting blade.

To enable Bill to make the extremely miniscule cuts on his most-detailed designs, he acquired an architectural lamp, a high-powered magnifying glass with a light that clamps on the side of his table and brightly illuminates his work surface.

Another technique he has recently chosen to implement in his work is “pin-pricking,” where pins of varying gauges are used to augment dimension and texture of the original design.

Having seen an extensive array of Bill Hammann’s exquisite art work, learned about his early service in gang ministry, about his striving to help dropouts before he joined the Army, his service to our military for over two decades, all followed by his  jumping back into civilian life and striving to enhance folks spiritual life yet more…I’m left wondering, “Who does all that?”

That would be Col. Bill Hammann: U.S. Army (Ret.), parent, pastor, patriot…and artist, here on the Mountain.

That would be Col. Bill Hammann: U.S. Army (Ret.), parent, pastor, patriot…and artist, here on the Mountain.

Col. Bill Hammann can be reached via email at colwhh99@comcast.net.

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Bill Hammann is shown working on a silhouette scherenschnitte art piece.

Photo by Chris O’Connor

 

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Pictured is one of Bill Harmmann’s detailed and intricate pieces of scherenschnitte art work.

Photo by Bill Hammann