Bio: Foster, Gary (Footlocker’s Secrets – 2018)
Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail:
dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org
Surnames: Foster
----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 3/28/2018
Foster, Gary (Footlocker’s Secrets – 2018)
Footlocker’s Secrets Shared in Book About Former Neillsville Mayor
Gary Foster, a retired U. S. Navy aviator originally from Neillsville, used
notes and other items he found in his grandfather’s World War I footlocker to
write “Notes from the Trenches: A Musician’s Journey Through World War I.”
Foster’s grandfather was Leo Foster, who during the early 1950’s served as
Neillsville’s mayor. The author lives in Arizona, where he works as an aviation
analyst for the Federal Aviation Administration. (Contributed photo)
By Scott Schultz
Music jumped from Leo Foster’s footlocker when it was opened by his grandson
Gary Foster. That music was in the letters, notes, clippings and keepsakes Leo
kept in the footlocker – itself a keepsake from the Leo’s service in World War
I.
Gary pored through the footlocker and developed its contents into a book, “Notes
from the Trenches – A Musician’s Journey through World War I.” It takes Leo’s
travels from the times of being a youthful musician with his family’s band,
through World War I battles 1917-19, and through his post-war life with his wife
Mary and his time as Neillsville’s mayor.
The book was released in January.
“I got the footlocker when my parents moved out of their house,” Gary said. “I
was busy with my career, so I really didn’t get through it for a while.”
That all changed when Gary, then a U. S. Navy flight officer, retired and
started to really dig into the footlocker’s contents in 2010.
The footlocker deepened the knowledge Gary had about his family, and then some.
Putting it all together in a book was his means of preserving and sharing it,
along with using it as a reminder of War’s horrors.
Above all, Gary said, he didn’t want his family’s history to be filled with
gaps.
“It uncovered a lot,” Gary said. “When my dad (longtime Neillsville optometrist
John Foster) died in 2016, he took every ounce of family information with him,”
Gary said.
The family’s first touch with Neillsville was in 1880, when Leo’s father started
working at a brewery and then ran Farmers Hotel, which Gary said was on the
property where the Clark County Courthouse sits.
Leo’s family then moved to La Crosse. His father died when he was a small child;
Leo and his three sisters were raised primarily by his mother, who was a nurse.
Gary said it was clear that the family was musically inclined. Leo and his
sisters traveled the area as the Foster Orchestra; they also performed as stage
actors.
Leo’s family, German immigrants, was “a little bit irritated” about the start of
World War I, according to Gary. Leo took action, joining the Wisconsin National
Guard. He trained with the 32nd “Red Arrow” Division in Camp Douglas and Texas
before being sent to France.
Leo wrote letters to his family about four times each week during his time
overseas.
Gary said Leo’s musical skills were handy during Leo’s service years: his job
included serving as a bugler.
The letters present a mix of Leo’s apparent attempts of humor to lighten his
family’s fears while still expressing the war’s ugly realities.
“Say, what do you want to worry so much for, this ain’t a bad war,” Leo wrote in
one of the letters in July of 1918. “Look at all the experience you get out of
all of this. ‘Course, a little iron falling around once in a while is just about
right to give us a little amusement.”
He described being hit in the forehead by a round ricocheting in the trenches of
France.
Leo was affected by shell-shock during fighting in Roncheres, France, and then
was seriously wounded during the Second Battle of Marne when an explosion pitted
shrapnel into his head, legs and abdomen.
A medic marked Leo as being dead, and his mother received a War Department
telegram stating that. She later received another telegram – from the Red Cross
– informing her that Leo was being treated in an army hospital.
As he recovered, a plate in his head to cover a wound, Leo itched to rejoin his
battle-hardened comrades in the field.
He returned to the battlefields in September of 1918, where he again was
wounded.
An armistice ended the fighting on Nov. 11, 1918. Leo and his Red Arrow Division
comrades returned to Wisconsin heroes’ welcome in April of 1919.
Gary included in the book the highs and lows he learned about Leo’s postwar
life. Among the highs was his marriage to Martha, who was one of the first women
to be licensed as an optometrist in Wisconsin.
Leo and Martha made their ways to Black River Falls, her opening optometric
practices in Neillsville and Black River Falls. Foster Primary Eye Care
continues in its third generation, having been operated by Gary’s father and now
by his brother Gregory.
The Fosters moved to Neillsville in 1936, and in 1950 Leo became Neillsville’s
mayor for three years.
Along the way, Leo occasionally told parts of his story to others. But until
Gary’s book unlocked it, much of the stories remained in Leo’s footlocker.
The book goes beyond chronicling the war, instead delving into Leo’s deepest
thoughts as described through his letters and the footlocker’s other contents.
“This book is a tribute to the men like my grandfather who fought as Doughboys
in the First World War,” Gary wrote in the book’s prologue. “…The men are all
gone now, but as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the armistice in 1918, we
need to remember the selfless sacrifice they made. A heavy price was paid in the
war to end all wars. My grandfather was in the thick of this war. He blew his
bugle commands as a patriot, and he paid a heavy price – one that he recounts in
his notes from the trenches.”
Notes from the Trenches: A Musicians Journey Through World War I, is available
through Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.
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