Faithful leader of WWI veterans group sees ranks dwindle

Sunday, May 19, 2002

Cox News Service

Washington -- In 1975, she made the promise.

Every year thereafter, she has repeated it to each successive national commander of the Veterans of World War I of the USA.

"I've promised that I will stay to the last one," said Muriel Sue Parkhurst Kerr, executive director of an organization that is quite literally dying.

"When we started, there were over 700,000 members," she recalled. "Now we're down to fewer than 550 men and women."

About 4.7 million men and women wore the uniform of the United States in World War I. Now the youngest living veterans are 98 or 99 years old, she said. The oldest is 116. Of the more than two-dozen national commanders with whom she has worked, only two are living.

"The national commander now is Frank Woodruff Buckles, who is 101 and lives in West Virginia," she said. "He lied about his age to get into the Army in the First World War. Then he served as a retread in World War II. He was a POW in the Philippines. They recently took away his driver's license, but he gets around on his tractor."

When she started, the World War I veterans organization had a staff of 21 and an office near Capitol Hill. More recently, she has worked alone from her home as a volunteer. She hasn't received a salary for the job in a decade. The group's total income last year was $180.

"Nobody makes donations to us anymore," she said.

What about membership dues?

"They're all life members," she said with a rueful laugh. "In the 1970s, we sold lifetime memberships for $25. That wasn't too bright."

But she has no complaints about the arrangement.

'700,000 grandfathers'

"I'm the luckiest girl in the world," she said. "I've had 700,000 grandfathers, each with his own distinctive story to tell or not to tell. Some of them just didn't want to talk about their war experiences."

Her own stories come non-stop. Some are recalled with laughter, others with quivering lips and teary eyes.

The most recent concerns a harrowing electric fire in her home. She and her husband escaped and most of the World War I organization's materials survived, but the Alexandria house is uninhabitable. Jim Kerr, Muriel Sue's husband, is a services coordinator in the national headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The couple are now living with Muriel Sue's parents in Mount Vernon, Va.

Over the decades, most of the historical materials -- uniforms, letters and such -- have been sent to the U.S. Military History Institute at Carlyle, Pa., she said.

She receives five to 10 pieces of mail every day. Many want information about an ancestor. Sometimes the research destroys a family myth.

"Some of these men had seen France and didn't want to go back to the farm in Kansas," she said. "So they just disappeared and started a new life. Legends grew up that Granddad was a double agent, when actually he had headed to the hills."

A couple of these stories of World War I veterans' secret lives have been shown on the TV series "Unsolved Mysteries," she said.

She remembers how, many years ago, she received a page from TV Guide with "help. help. help." written on it and the address circled. For several months, similar pages came in.

She had authorities in the Louisiana town in the address check out the situation. They found a World War I veteran's widow living with relatives. The relatives said the woman had dementia. But at Kerr's urging, the authorities made a surprise visit and found the woman chained in a bathroom.

"After that, I thought to myself: 'I'm never leaving this job because I've made a difference,' " Kerr said.

More than just a job

The job has shaped her life, taking her to a veterans' salute in France and national conventions and before congressional committees, where she testified about the needs of World War I vets. Her son, now a middle school teacher, grew up playing with World War I memorabilia while his mom worked weekends in the office.

She originally figured she would be at it only a few months.

Newly divorced with a "baby on my hip" when she was hired, Kerr said she "thought my husband would realize that he couldn't live without us and come back."

She met her curent husband through the Internet. Working for the VFW, he was researching veterans of World War I and the name "Muriel Sue Parkhurst" popped up during an online search. They met at a convention of World War I veterans and later married.

The Internet site of Veterans of World War I of the USA had to be taken down, Kerr said, because she couldn't afford to mail out materials sought by people who discovered it.

Asked her age, Kerr replies that she is "young enough to be the granddaughter" of a World War I veteran and "old enough to qualify for AARP."

Every Veterans Day, she said, there is a 3 p.m. ceremony honoring World War I vets at the Arlington National Cemetery grave of General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing.

"It's always beautiful and touching," she said. "But very few people know about it."

And each year, there are fewer veterans to honor.

Her voice wavers as she remembers how Ray Atkins, a former national commander of her organization, was hooked up to life- support systems in an Oklahoma City hospital when she made her annual vow to him.

"He said, 'You're not going to leave us, are you?' " she said.

Of course not, she assured him.

"A promise is the most important thing in my life," said Muriel Sue Parkhurst Kerr.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The address of Veterans of World War I of the USA is P.O. Box 8027, Alexandria, Va., 22306. The phone number is (703) 780-5660.

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