In 1943 a Bluffton man sat beside General Pershing in a bus
By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com
Spoiler alert – You’d better read this entire feature to the very end.
The longest-running column in the Bluffton News titled “Mainly Personal,” ran weekly from the very early 1940s to the late 1960s.
Next to sports and obituaries, it was the most watched-for column in the paper. Ted Biery created it, Milt Edwards continued it and Charles Hilty kept it going.
What was it? Let’s put it this way–It was 80 years ahead of Twitter, TikTok and any social media conception imaginable. It included several very short pieces on Bluffton residents and former residents, basically being themselves.
At the bottom of this story is a 1943 sample of one of the columns.
Here is a Bluffton brush with history, posted in the April 8, 1943, Bluffton News Mainly Personal column.
Meeting an internationally famous general most unexpectedly was the experience last week of Willard Lee, residing northwest of town, while on a bus between Toledo and Detroit.
Lee took a seat in the bus beside an elderly looking gentlemen and the two struck up a conversation touching on such topics as the weather, crops and the war.
CONTINUES
Finally, the stranger asked Lee if he knew to whom he was talking. Lee indicated that he did not and caught his breath in astonishment when informed that his travel-partner was none other than General John J. Pershing, commander of the American forces in the first World War and a prominent figure in the peace talks following it.
Note: Our own research found that the general was 83 years old during the bus trip, as he was born in 1860 and died in 1948.
More background
In our own reading of Bluffton News back issues, available on a website Chronicling America, we continue to read The News in long stretches, looking for interesting stories. That’s how we came across the General Pershing story.
But, then, the second shoe dropped. Here’s a brief item from the very next week’s Mainly Personal column:
To read this entire feature on BlufftonForever.com click HERE.
