Veterans column: Newark's Armstrong remembered for WWI sacrifice
When World War I casualty Eldon Leroy Armstrong was discovered to be connected to the last name Green instead of Armstrong in Newark, more biographical information became accessible.
After his parents divorced in 1908, it appears the family went through some hard times. In 1909, 13-year-old Eldon was sent to the Boys Reformatory in Fairfield County for turning in a false fire alarm, he was paroled in 1910. His mother, Dora, is listed as living in Detroit, Michigan in the 1910 census. It is unclear if he went to live with her or stayed with family in Newark, but on the Society page of the March 7, 1911 Newark Advocate, a party for Mary Bash was mentioned and Eldon was listed among the guests. On April 18, 1911, court records show that he was sent back to Fairfield County for an unspecified parole violation and was released in October 1912. He was almost 18 years old and it is the last mention that was found of Eldon Leroy Green.
Eldon Armstrong will surface in records on May 22, 1917, when he married in Detroit, Michigan. In June 1917 he registered for the draft and on July 30, 1917, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in Detroit. On June 26, 1918, his wife divorced him. A muster record from the Marine Base in Quantico, VA. dated July 1918, lists Eldon as “Transferred to the Overseas Department.”
On Oct. 4, 1918, Corporal Armstrong was serving with the 5th Marines in France at Mont Blanc Ridge. At about noon, they attacked the German defensives. The Marines won the battle, but Armstrong was killed in action that day.
On Nov. 4, 1918, when the story was published in the Advocate that Leroy Armstrong was killed in action, there weren’t many clues to his identity unless one knew his grandmother, Margaret Hupp, who was mentioned in the article. His mother who had remarried was listed as Mrs. Henry Lovejoy of Akron so possibly many in the area missed that the boy they knew as Leroy Green was killed. On October 4, 1919, his mother published a memorial to her son in the paper with the headline, “Sergeant Eldon Leroy Green” with a short history of his military career and a poem that began, “Mother when you search through wounded France, to find the cross that marks my rest, I think the grass will hear you come and tell it to my silent breast.”
His mother divorced Henry Lovejoy and moved back to Newark and became a founding member of the Licking County Gold Star Mothers. She married Joseph McGlade, but divorced him in 1927. In 1930 she traveled to France with other mothers and wives of those that had died in WWI under the name Dora Lovejoy-McGlade. She was taken to the Meuse Argonne American Cemetery to visit her son’s grave.
Years later on February 20, 1962, Dora was at her daughter's home watching coverage of John Glenn's space orbit. Her clothing caught fire from a wall heater behind her. She died at the hospital a few days later due to severe burns. She was buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery, leaving the remembrance of her son Eldon Leroy Armstrong on the back of her headstone.
The mystery of why Leroy changed his name from Green to Armstrong will probably never be known, however, it is enough that Licking County knows and remembers another one of their sons who paid the ultimate sacrifice in war.
Doug Stout is the Veterans Project Coordinator for the Licking County Library. You may contact him at 740-349-5571 or dstout@lickingcountylibrary.org. His book "Never Forgotten: The Stories of Licking County Veterans" is available for purchase at the library or online at bookbaby.com & Amazon.com.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Veterans column: Newark's Armstrong remembered for WWI sacrifice
