21 Shell-Shocked and Silent: A Soldier's Long Goodbye

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 21 – May 20, 2025

Prompt: Military

Ancestor: Robert Luther Nolen, My Maternal Great Uncle

Uncle Robert, my grandfather Leonard’s older brother, was always there at our family holiday gatherings. He seldom spoke, never joined in the laughter. As a child I was told that he had been shell-shocked in the Great War. He didn’t make the ultimate sacrifice, be he sacrificed all the same. What war didn’t take from his body, it claimed from his spirit.

Prior to WWI he was known as Luther. During and after WWI, he was Robert, so I will use both names.

Early Life

Robert Luther in his father's lap

Robert Luther Nolen was born August 14, 1895, in Augusta, Woodruff County, Arkansas—the oldest child of Mattie McCorkle and Parmenas James (P.J.) Nolen. Sometime between 1900 and 1907, his mother left her husband and took the boys to Tulsa, Indian Territory. Mattie married Bill McQuiston in May 1907 in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The marriage license, issued in Carthage, Jasper County, Missouri, states they were both residents of Tulsa, Indian Territory.

Robert Luther, Mattie, Leonard

In 1909, Mattie and Bill were living in the Illinois Hotel in downtown Tulsa. Leonard, then a newspaper boy, had missed delivering papers to Charles Page, an oilman, for a few days. Concerned, Mr. Page learned that Mattie was gravely ill with tuberculosis, and Bill was in the hospital. Leonard was left to care for his mother while continuing to sell newspapers.

Moved by their plight, Mr. Page asked Captain Breeding of the Salvation Army to bring Mattie and her sons to Sand Springs, west of Tulsa, where Page was building his dream industrial city. When Captain Breeding went to get Mattie, the boys were nowhere to be found. Captain Breeding left a note telling them to take the train west to Sand Springs. Leonard showed up two days later. Luther didn’t arrive for about two weeks.

Captain Breeding and his wife cared for Mattie while her husband recovered, and Bill eventually joined them, along with his three sons from a previous marriage. Despite their care, Mattie died December 27, 1909. Their act of compassion marked the beginning of the Sand Springs Home, which Captain Breeding and Charles Page established to care for widows and children.

Luther and Leonard continued to be part of Mr. Page’s dream and spent the rest of their youth at the Sand Springs Home for Children, being the first two children that Page brought to Sand Springs to come under his care.

Luther appears to have been a sensitive, creative, but somewhat lost adolescent. He had beautiful penmanship and told his brother Leonard that he could become a great penmanship scholar by ordering the Ransom Penmanship Course for $25. He wrote poems, stories, and a prayer.

Just as Luther was nowhere to be found when the Breedings looked for him in 1909, he had a tendency to leave the Home from time to time. For most of 1913 through 1915, Luther lived with his father in Batesville, Arkansas, or with his aunt and uncle, Nettie and Dr. Bettis, in Wheatley, Arkansas. Time after time he begged Leonard to ask Mr. Page to provide employment for him in Sand Springs. Eventually, he would return to scoldings from Mr. Page, and Leonard would try to help him stay on the straight and narrow. Then he would wander off again. There are numerous letters between Leonard and his father expressing concern about not knowing where Luther was. By January 1916, Luther was back in Sand Springs going to school.

A World at War

Leonard and Robert Luther before the war. 

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. Posters placed in conspicuous places announced that all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty were to report to the polling places in the election district in which they resided. They were required to register in accordance with the president’s proclamation on Tuesday, June 5th, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Luther, age 21, registered for the World War I Draft as an engineer with the Pioneer Telephone Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He reported for his physical examination on August 14, 1917. A letter from Luther’s father to Leonard dated March 10, 1918, mentions that he was sorry Luther failed to get into the Navy on account of his hearing not being perfect.

Luther was drafted into the Army and ordered to report to Camp Bowie in Fort Worth, Texas, on February 23, 1918. However, on February 25 he wrote to his brother from Camp Travis near San Antonio, Texas.

He traveled by train to Camp Gordon, near Atlanta, Georgia, stopping along the way along the way to drill in the streets of Texarkana, Little Rock, and Memphis, before arriving at Camp Gordon on April 26.

After a few weeks of training at Camp Gordon he was transported to Camp Stuart, near Newport News, Virginia, arriving on May 19. He was assigned to the 106th Field Artillery.

Robert Luther Nolen appears on the passenger list for the 8th Provisional Company, Infantry on the ship Matsonia, sailing June 6 out of Newport News. It is assumed they were bound for France.

The next mention of Robert comes in a letter from a Red Cross nurse in England, dated September 13, 1918, informing the family that he was in the hospital - but offering no details about whether he had been wounded. 

On October 26, Leonard received this telegram:

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT IT IS OFFICIALLY REPORTED THAT PRIVATE ROBERT L NOLAN INFANTRY WAS SEVERELY WOUNDED IN ACTION ABOUT SEPT SIXTH DEPARTMENT HAS NO FURTHER INFORMATION.

HARRIS THE ADJT GENL

Leonard wrote to his father that same day and mentioned he had received a letter from Luther in which he told him all about being wounded. Unfortunately that letter was sent to P.J. who sent it to Luther’s Uncle Thomas with a request to send it back. Unfortunately that letter never made it back to Robert’s immediate family.

The American Red Cross sent the following information in a letter dated December 16:

“We are advised in a report by the U.S. Base Hospital No. 29, St. Ann’s Road, Tottenham, England, dated November 8, 1918, that Private Robert L. Nolen, Co. L. 106th Infantry, A.E.F. Am., is suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in his abdominal wall, and a slight dementia has developed. Such dementia might easily accompany so serious a wound, yet with the skillful care of our doctors and nurses, and the resistance that the patient is showing, we shall hope with you for his complete recovery.”

January 6, 1919 P. J. Received this information:

YOUR SON PRIVATE ROBERT NOLEN IS NOW IN GOOD PHYSICAL CONDITION

WAS SHOT IN ABDOMEN BUT HAS COMPLETELY RECOVERED

MENTALLY IS SOMEWHAT DISTURBED BUT QUIET AND INDIFFERENT

WILL BE TRANSFERRED SHORTLY TO US FEDERAL HOSPITAL NUMBER THIRTY FOUR EAST NORFOLK MASS FOR FURTHER TREATMENT

SIGNED D F WINN EXECUTIVE OFFICER UNQUOTE

And on January 18, this information came to Leonard:

VISITED LUTHER TODAY HE WAS WOUNDED BUT HAS FULLY RECOVERED

BUT IS MORE OR LESS MENTALLY DEPRESSED

TRANSFERRING HIM TOMORROW TO EAST NORFOLK VA

WILL WRITE YOU PARTICULARS

HOLMES

January 22 P.J. received this letter from U.S.A. General Hospital #24, East Norfolk, Mass.

My dear Mr. Nolan,

As you probably know, your son, Robert Nolan, was admitted to this hospital January 20 for mental observation. He is in good physical condition and is receiving excellent care. His present condition is not the result of being wounded.

I will be very glad to hear from you if there is anything that I can do for you.

Very truly yours,

Margaret Crooks, Social Service

July 7, 1919, P.J. wrote to Leonard saying that he was glad Leonard had visited Luther in the hospital and found him getting along well.

Sometime between July and September 1919, Robert was transferred to the Eastern Oklahoma State Hospital. P.J. wrote of visiting him in August of that year, and he was enumerated there as a patient in the 1920 census. A friend who visited him said that he could talk all right at times, but sometimes he would not talk and had to write the answers.

Leonard became Robert’s guardian in 1919. Tulsa County has a guardianship file at their warehouse, but a judge told me that the only people who can access it are those that were parties to the guardianship—Robert and Leonard. Hmmm. Both long deceased. Why are they holding it if no one is alive that could access it?

Great Uncle Frank Coon, Ralph Wallis, Great Uncle Hank Harmon, Grandpa Leonard Nolen, Great Uncle Robert Nolen. In front are my brothers, Storm and Davy Wallis. Christmas 1952

Leonard and Robert later in life. 

From 1930 through at least 1955, Robert was a patient at the Veteran’s Administration’s Hospital No. 78 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had a 15-day leave of absence pass from December 17, 1954, to January 1, 1955, to go to Sand Springs. In his later years Robert lived in a nursing home in Skiatook, Oklahoma - just north of Sand Springs - alongside Frank Coon and Bill Moore, Leonard’s brothers-in-law. 

Robert Luther Nolen died March 9, 1979, in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

Epilogue

He didn’t die on the battlefield. There was no Gold Star flag in the window. No folded triangle of a flag presented at his funeral. But Private Robert Luther Nolen gave everything for his country. He gave the long, quiet decades of his life.

A promising young man with a poetic soul and beautiful penmanship became a silent presence at family gatherings. Shell-shocked. Wounded in body and mind. For more than sixty years after the war ended, he lived in institutions or under care, never truly able to return to the life he left behind when he boarded that ship in 1918.

His sacrifice wasn’t measured in years lost—but in the quality of life forever taken. May we remember that not all who served returned whole, and some never fully returned at all.

20 The Float, the Flip, and the Return of the VW

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks


Week 20 – May 13, 2025


Prompt: Wheels


Ancestor: Myself


My family moved to Bentonville, Arkansas (population about 6,000) in the summer of 1968. I was 14 and very upset about the move. That fall, I’d be starting 9th grade—high school—and I didn’t know a soul.

One of the first things we did after arriving was meet with the high school guidance counselor. She suggested I take Driver’s Education over the summer so I could start meeting classmates. My mom would take me to the unpaved roads in Bella Vista to practice driving her Volkswagen Beetle. By the end of the summer, I’d completed Driver’s Ed, and the instructor told us we could take the driving test at the local fire station and get our licenses.

Technically, the license wasn’t valid until we turned 16—but it looked exactly like a regular license, with no restrictions printed on it. I made sure my parents knew that. They let me drive Mom’s car around town, including short trips to the downtown shops less than a mile away.

The Float and the Flip

A big annual event was building our class float for the Homecoming Parade, inside the National Guard Armory. Many of my classmates were from farms and rural areas, and someone’s dad always loaned a hay trailer. We’d build the structure with chicken wire, then stuff each hole with colored paper napkins. Our school colors were black and gold, so we always needed a mountain of yellow napkins and plenty of black spray paint. And we weren’t the only ones—each of the four classes built a float.

While working on our sophomore class float, we ran out of yellow napkins. The town’s Walmart and both grocery stores were completely out. Brenda Shores said her parents’ store in nearby Cave Springs still had some. I had driven Mom’s VW to the armory, so I offered to take Brenda and two others to get them.

I was 15. But my license didn’t say I couldn’t drive. My parents knew I had the car. No problem.

We made it to the store, loaded up on napkins, and headed back to Bentonville. Then—on a curve—the left rear tire blew out. I lost control of the car, and we flipped. The driver’s side window scraped along the pavement as I watched the road seemingly slide past my face. We came to a stop in the grass. I reached up and turned the key to stop the engine. The windshield had popped out, and we all crawled out, dazed but unharmed.

Officer Couch, a well-known Highway Patrolman, was on the scene in no time. He drove us back to the armory. As we neared it, I saw my parents coming toward us in Dad’s car. He probably heard about the accident on his police scanner. We were taken to the hospital to be checked out—no major injuries, though we were sore all over the next day.

Mom was furious about her VW—she had bought it with her own money—and gave me the silent treatment for weeks. Dad learned that VWs were known to flip with a blowout and vowed never to own another. I got a ticket for driving with a restricted license. Apparently, it was “understood” that it wasn’t valid until age 16.

The good news? Our sophomore class float won first place in the Homecoming Parade. The theme: Beat the Mounties!

My First Car

After that, I didn’t want to drive. Even as a passenger, curves made me panic. By the time I turned 16 later that year, I was recovering—and asking for a car. Many of my classmates had one, some brand new, but most used. My dad made me a deal: if I ever made all A’s, he’d buy me a car. He figured it was a bet he couldn’t lose. I was a consistent A-B honor roll student, active in Rainbow Girls, the church youth group, dating a football player, and eventually editor of the school yearbook. But I didn’t have time—or enough motivation—to make all A’s. I worked summer jobs for minimum wage, not enough to buy a car on my own.

I spent my freshman year of college at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri. Without a car, my parents had to drive me when I moved into the dorm. I had a boyfriend back home in Bentonville and occasionally took the bus back. Springfield had a good local bus system, so I could get to Battlefield Mall to stock up on necessities.

I pledged Tri Delta, and they took scholarship seriously. As pledges, we had to spend two hours each evening in the library. Once again, I was on the A-B honor roll. Toward the end of my second semester, I realized I might actually make all A’s. The only class in question was bowling—my average had slipped each week. I told the instructor that if I got an A, I might get a car. She said if I aced the written final, it would offset my average.

I called my dad and asked, “Do you remember telling me you’d buy me a car if I made all A’s?”

His reply: “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

I told him bowling was the only worry—but I planned to ace the final.

A week later, my parents called and told me to take the bus to the Volkswagen dealership to look at colors. I said, “I already know. I want yellow.” They replied, “Go look at the colors—especially the light blue ones.”

The car my dad swore he would never buy again. 

When they picked me up at the end of the semester, they were driving a brand-new 1973 baby blue Volkswagen Super Beetle. I guess once Dad started pricing cars, VW was the most economical. He had to break his vow—never another VW.

On the Road Again

I drove that VW all through college and into my first job with the FAA as an Air Traffic Controller in Houston in 1979. It didn’t have air conditioning, and even though my commute was short, I’d arrive at work a sweaty mess. I eventually bought a Toyota Corona, but after a few weeks of power steering, the VW felt like driving a tank.

I had a co-worker repair the dents and repaint it, and I sold it for almost what my parents paid for it. That little blue VW carried me through college, my first career steps, and a story I’ll never forget.

19 At The Library: Treasures From The Stacks

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 19 – May 6, 2025

Prompt: At the Library

Ancestor Focus: Wells McCool, My Paternal 3rd Great Grandfather.

During a recent genealogy road trip, I visited two incredible libraries: the St. Louis County Library and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My goal going in was to look for Quaker Monthly Meeting Minutes and ship manifests. But like so much in genealogy, plans evolved. Here’s what I uncovered between the stacks.

St. Louis County Library – St. Louis, Missouri

Entrance to the Genealogy Center

The Clark Family Branch of the St. Louis County Library boasts a massive genealogy collection, in the Emerson History and Genealogy Center on the second floor. 125,000 items are shelved by state and county. 

Lawrence Co., MO books

I focused on Lawrence County, Missouri, where my Crull and Lent ancestors lived in 1870. With 25 books to review, I checked indexes for burials, marriages, newspapers, churches, and more. 

I found one new record: the 1886 marriage of my great-grand uncle, John Franklin Crull, to Mattie Tolivar. I also photographed a map of the county townships from 1879 and a reference to the Lawrence County Historical Society in Mt. Vernon—definitely a spot to visit on a future trip. I wish I had snapped a picture of my friend Linda, seated on the floor of the stacks with a small fortress of books around her!

Allen County Public Library (ACPL)– Fort Wayne, Indiana

Entrance to ACPL

ACPL’s Genealogy Center ranks among the top in the country. After joining a helpful tour, I quickly shifted my attention from ship records to their powerful Periodical Source Index (PERSI). There, I found treasures for the Nolen, McCorkle, and Lent branches of my maternal line—articles ranging from Revolutionary War pensions to regional family histories. 

A few favorites included"

• A Revolutionary War pension summary for my 4th great-grandfather, Shadrack Nolen

• Bible records, biographies, and family studies for various McCorkle lines

• Lent family histories in Dutch colonial records from 17th-century New York

Union Monthly Meeting Books

Later, I returned to my original quest—tracking down Quaker meeting minutes for Union Monthly Meeting in Miami County, Ohio. After a bit of a wild goose chase through opposite ends of the library, a librarian and I finally found the nine oversized books I was searching for. 

Most were too faint to read or outside my time frame, but one entry stood out. It confirmed that Wells McCool, who had a civil marriage to Anne Coate, had later been disowned by the Quakers for marrying outside the discipline. His offering of apology was eventually accepted—but not until three years after the wedding. The mystery of that delay still nags at me.

Reflections

I walked into both libraries with specific research goals. I walked out with new records, new leads, and a deeper appreciation for the dedication of librarians who know exactly how to help when you’re looking for a surname you can barely spell. My road trip was a reminder that sometimes the greatest discoveries come not from what you planned—but from what you found when you got there.