A purchase in a Phoenix antiques store has led Chicago native Ed Hennessy to reach out to Register readers as to the whereabouts of a Lillian Henry, her sister, Mary I. Chesney, formerly of Kansas City, circa 1964, or their descendants.
Lillian Henry was married briefly to Humboldt native Virgil Henry, son of Edna Rivers Klingensmith, before he was killed on his 22nd birthday in World War II.
Hennessy stumbled onto letters and other keepsakes exchanged between Virgil and his mother and wife for the two years he was separated from his loved ones, stored in a recipe box.
Intrigued, Hennessy traced the contents to Humboldt, where Edna and her son are buried at Mount Hope Cemetery. Virgil was initially buried in a military cemetery in the Netherlands, but his mother had his body sent home in 1948 to be interred closer to home.
This letter from her son, Virgil Henry, is but one of several keepsakes Edna Klingensmith of Humboldt saved in a recipe box. Ed Hennessy, Gilbert, Ariz., discovered the keepsakes in an antique store.
?It was an amazing discovery,? Hennessy said of the find, saying even 75 years later their ?voices? are alive. Hennessy surmises Edna Klingensmith must have been a ?resilient woman,? whose life from 1896 to 1966 spanned 15 U.S. presidents, two world wars, the Great Depression, and inventions ranging from the telephone to space rockets.
Virgil Henry?s ultimate sacrifice on March 24, 1945, came during Operation Varsity, ?the biggest one-day air assault in military history,? Hennessy writes, ?to win the war against Germany.? Henry served as a ?Glider Rider.?
Hennessy notes that March 24, 2020 will be the 75th anniversary of Operation Varsity.
Hennessy, now of Gilbert, Ariz., writes he would be willing to share the troves of information on the Klingensmiths that he has gleaned primarily from the Register?s archives.
He also said he feels a calling to visit Edna?s gravesite ?and quietly read to her the letters she cherished so much as to save them forever.?
To contact Hennessy email: [email protected].