OK, people. Hello. OK. Can you hear me? I can hear you. I hope you can hear me. And if we quiet down,
I think you can. I hope you can. And I apologize to those of you in the back who do not have chairs.
This is how many chairs they have here. And we're great.
for this big crowd. Sorry, we don't have seats for everyone. There are three seats still up front. So
please figure out, draw straws, and figure out who could come up to get them. OK? Well, let's get started.
My name's Dave Nord, and I'm the Monroe County historian, which is a volunteer appointment in every
county, a historian by the Indiana Historical Society in the Indiana
History Bureau. And I welcome you all here today. I'm the Monroe County guy. But in a few minutes, I'll
introduce somebody from the Indiana Historical Bureau. We're here today to honor and to historicize
our community's most highly decorated soldier, Gary Kisters. And I use the pompous academic term historicize,
because I'm a pompous academic.
By that, all I mean is to place into history, local history, state history, national history. Gary Kister's
has been honored several times in Bloomington and Monroe County, but the marker that we're dedicating
today outside is a historical marker. It's a state historical marker authorized and approved by the
Indiana Historical Bureau.
And I think that's important, and that's why we're talking about history today, and I'll get onto that
in a few minutes. But first, I would like to introduce Casey Pfeiffer, who is representing, she's the
manager of the Historical Marker Program for the Indiana Historical Bureau. And she'll say a few words
about the program, and then we'll turn back to the program itself. So Casey, you want to come up here?
Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Dave. My name is Casey Pfeiffer. I'm the Historical Marker Program
Director at the Indiana Historical Bureau, and I'm just so thrilled to be able to be here today as we
get ready to dedicate this new marker honoring Gary Kisters. The Historical Bureau's division of the
Indiana State Library, and our mission is to share the rich history of our state. Over the years, 100
plus years,
We have endeavored to do that through numerous programs and projects, but the most notable and visible
of those has been the State Historical Marker Program. It is a collaborative program. It's public-driven.
We cannot do what we do without the interest of people across the state who are committed to preserving
our history. And with that in mind, I just want to very briefly thank former county historian,
Glenda Murray, who initiated this project and spearheaded the application. There's a lot of work that
goes into these projects. It's limited text, but there's a lot to make sure that that text is accurate
and provides
you know.
wonderful representation of the topic. I, of course, also want to thank Dave, current county historian.
He's been my main point of contact in this for the last few months. And he's really taken over the mantle
and working really hard to preserve the history here. So we're very appreciative. And then, of course,
to the Monroe County Airport and to the Monroe County History Center for all of their work, sponsoring,
funding, helping with installation, everything, like I said, that goes into these projects. And,
of course, finally, to the Kisters family. Thank you so much for being here and for the work
that you've done to preserve his memory. Markers are snapshots. They're tangible reminders of our past.
Over the course of just a few sentences, they help to inform and educate us about the people, places,
events, and organizations that have helped to shape the history of our state and nation. And of course,
Lieutenant Kisters is worthy of this recognition. This is today
One of over 800 markers that have been installed since the marker program began in 1946. It's our eighth
marker to be dedicated this year. And of those eight, it's our third that actually looks at military
history in our state. So we dedicated a marker back in June for Major George Slaughter, a Revolutionary
War soldier down in Clark County. We dedicated one back in May for Lieutenant Colonel William Swain,
who was a Civil War veteran, and then here today to look at someone who served in World War II. And
it's really our hope that with this marker, it is a lasting reminder
reminder of Lieutenant Gary Kister's contributions to our state, to our country, and his deep ties to
the community and all the work he did post-war. So thank you all so much for allowing me to be here
and be part of this wonderful program. Thank you, Casey. And she's done most of the thank yous, so we
won't turn this into a thank you fast. This isn't a TV awards show.
But I was going to mention Glenda Murray, who brought this project, did most of the work on the project,
and particularly the airport staff and management board, who supported not just this gathering today,
but the marker itself with money and with work. And so I really appreciate that. And one group that
deserves some thanks are the Daughters of the American Revolution, local chapter, who are providing us with
Snacks to Dan, snacks. That counts, snacks count. But let's get on with the history, with the historicization
here. And I'll start myself and then turn it over to my colleagues here up at the front table. When
Gary Kistors returned to the United States after his service,
in Africa and Sicily in 1944, early 1944. He was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross and
with the Congressional Medal of Honor in Washington D.C. by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall and
President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt. And this was big news all over the country. I've
been looking at news stories from February 1944.
And the paper, all the papers had this story from east to west coast. The reason why they did is because
Kistors was the first American serviceman to be honored with both of those high awards. And I've printed
for you several of the news stories that are a packet in the back. One is from the New York Times that
has the presentation story from Washington, and the other
There are two others about Bloomington and Kister's coming to Bloomington after he left Washington.
And be sure to pick those up. I decided to print those for you. I think I have enough for all of you.
And if I don't, tell me about it and I'll get one to you. But there's one new story that I particularly
like that I didn't copy for you. And it was in Women's Wear Daily. Women's Wear Daily was then and still is now
the leading trade publication of the fashion and apparel industry in New York City. And their story,
I didn't copy it because it's essentially the same wire service story that you see in other clippings.
But there was a twist that I really liked, and the twist is this, the headline. The headline was,
Ex-Fur Man, First Soldier to Win Too High Decorations. Fur Man.
Yes, Gary Kissers was a fur man. He was a furrier. He had a fur store before the war, and he had a fur
store after the war, selling fur coats, stoles, scarves, etc. He was not a professional soldier. He
was a citizen soldier. For women's wear daily, that was important. He was one of them. He was in retail
trade. He was their guy.
So Women's Wear Daily highlighted his retail trade position as much as his military service. The citizen
soldier has been an ideal type throughout American history. The citizen soldier is an ordinary American
who answers the call of the country.
when needed, serves faithfully, and then goes home, goes back to family and community, back to ordinary
life. This ideal, this tradition, dates back to the American Revolution and even before. In 1776,
in fact, one of the American's grievances, which was listed in the Declaration of Independence, was
the presence of professional British soldiers in the colonies.
The Americans hated so-called standing armies. They preferred local militias of citizen soldiers. Often,
this was a big mistake during that war. In the early years of the Revolution, the war was nearly lost
several times because of the ineptitude of the American amateurs, the citizen soldiers. But in the end,
they won. And even General Washington,
who was about as close as the Americans could get to military professionalism, was a species of citizen
soldier. Throughout the war, Washington complained and whined incessantly to the Congress about the
need that the Army had for more professional personnel, for organization, for support. Sometimes he
got it, sometimes not. But when the war finally ended, after eight long,
years, Washington resigned his commission and went home. He thus became an American popular history
and lore, the personification of the citizen soldier. And so it was with Jerry, Gary Kisters. He served
faithfully, heroically, and then he went home. He operated a fur shop in Bloomington. And by doing that,
He made his military heroism all the more inspiring. It suggested that anyone can be a hero. Kister's
citations, I thought I would read to you and then I decided the better thing to do would be to print
them in full for you to read. So there's copies of the citations for the two awards back on the table.
The program, of course, is back there along with the clippings. The last sentence, and the marker itself
describes the awards. The last sentence of the Distinguished Service Cross citation, I think, sums up
both of them pretty well. The extraordinary heroism, initiative, and devotion to duty
with complete disregard for his own welfare displayed by Staff Sergeant Kisters reflect great credit
upon himself and the military service and are deserving of the highest praise. Now, let's put Gary Kisters
into historical context. What I'll do is introduce three speakers today. They'll be brief.
I'll introduce all three of them right now and then they'll take turns. Our first speaker will be Nick
Cullither talking about the historical context of Kisters in World War II. That is the war in North
Africa and Sicily and Italy. Nick is a professor of 20th century diplomatic history and international
affairs at IU.
Our next speaker will be John Summerlot, who will talk about the role of military veterans in the life
of Bloomington and Monroe County, both in the past and in the present. And John is a local historian
who specializes in IU history, as well as Monroe County Military and Veterans Affairs. And our third
speaker will be Justin Robertson at this end.
give us some personal reflections on Gary Kister's life in post-war Bloomington. Justin is operations
manager at the Monroe County History Center, and lucky for us today, he's Gary Kister's nephew. We also
have with us today several people from the Kister's family, children and grandchildren, and Justin will
introduce them as well.
when he speaks. So let me turn it over, the mic over now to Nick, and he'll start us off. Nick,
thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Dave. The first thing you have to understand about why Gary Kisters was
in North Africa and Spain is that it wasn't an American idea.
The American command structure from the Secretary of War on down to every general and planner on the
general staff knew that the best way to get to the heart of Germany quickly, the best way to bring the
war to a quick end, and the best way to take the pressure off the Soviet Union, which was always in
danger of pulling out of the war, was to go through France and Operation Overlord,
was planned very early on, and this was the American idea, was we move across the channel, we get into
France quickly, and it was thought to be good tank country on the inside of that Atlantic wall, and
you do battle with the Germans right there. But the invasions of North Africa and Italy, operations
Torch and Husky,
solved a strategic problem for Britain. The Battle of Dunkirk had left Britain's forces divided. Half
the army was located in Cairo, cut off from the rest of Europe by Rommel's Africa Corps, and the other
half in the British Isles itself. So in order to concentrate those forces, they needed to somehow break
through that and bring them together.
Montgomery's victory at the Battle of El Alamein, which kind of turned the tide in North Africa, didn't
really solve that problem. They were still marooned over on that side. German planes flying from bases
on both sides of the Mediterranean controlled that sea. And so ships couldn't move freely through, through
there. And it was hazardous for the Royal Navy to even resupply their troops in Africa. Churchill came
to America.
in two conferences known as the Second and Third Atlantic Conferences to make the case for a war on
what he called the soft underbelly of the axis to try to start the war by coming in through North Africa
and Italy. An idea that knocking Italy out of the war would be a psychological victory that would turn
the tide of the war.
The Americans were unanimously against it. The thing they were most afraid of was that Churchill would
somehow get FDR alone by himself. He could be tremendously persuasive. He was a hard man to argue with.
His wife, Clemmie, knew better than to argue with Winston. She said, Winston is a professional arguer.
I don't do it. I just go to my bedroom and I write him a letter.
which may explain why, despite the fact that they live together their entire lives, they have over 800
letters. One another. But in the end, Churchill did get Roosevelt by himself. And in the end, he prevailed.
His best argument was that American troops had no experience in modern combat.
And this notion of the citizen soldier was part of that idea. There was a conviction on the part of
our European allies that Americans weren't good fighters. They were too wrapped up in our consumerism,
maybe our furs, to be good fighters. And Churchill argued that the Americans needed some time and maybe
a less intense war
in order to kind of build up their skills and develop the techniques. And particularly, the techniques
of combined arms tactics involving a combination of air, sea, and land power, artillery, armor, and
infantry all operating in close coordination. It was a new technique of war, largely new to World War
II. And on this last point, he was right.
in the places where Gary Kisters fought in Tunis and in Sicily. If Kisters saw a plane, it was a German
plane, usually a Stuka. If he saw a tank, it would be a German tank. And so, is that my phone?
The Americans needed time to develop their techniques on this. And there was, you know, Kisters knew
in those settings that, you know, when the enemy was there, when they had the artillery, when they had
the tanks, when they had the planes, there was nobody coming to the rescue. They had to handle this
situation on their own. And hand grenades, rifles,
were pretty much all they had. Churchill was wrong, too. The underbelly of the Axis wasn't so soft.
Ernie Pyle was there. He said, the land and the weather were both against us. The country was shockingly
beautiful and just as shockingly hard to capture from the enemy. Historians would come to see Operations
Torch and Husky as where an inexperienced US Army
learned how to fight at a great cost. Kisters was in the 91st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron. And despite
that name, the 91st was at the time the only reconnaissance squadron in the entire European theater.
The recon platoons traveled light. They traveled in jeeps and scout cars without armor.
They carried 1928 Model Thompson submachine guns, one heavy machine gun per platoon. They were meant
to probe ahead of the main units and take out machine gun nests and artillery positions. That was their
job. The Marines, at this point in the war, had a slogan that described what they did. They said their
job was to make the world safe for the Army.
Kister's platoon could easily say the same thing. This was their job, was to go out and make the world
safe for the advancing troops. And I, for one, am very thankful to him for that, because my father was
part of the same army. He went into North Africa and through Sicily and into Italy. And he was several
weeks behind Kister's, however. My father, for the duration of the war, never saw a single live German.
He was in the Air Corps.
in the Eighth Army Air Corps. And before I had cataracts, I did have eyeglasses, too, and my father
did his entire life. So he never flew a plane, either. His job was to guard them. So like Gary Kisters,
he was a staff sergeant, and he was standing there with a carbine trying to keep the Italians away from
the planes. In North Africa, Kisters and his
men met a formidable enemy in the Africa Corps led by General Erwin Rommel. Rommel found the seam between
the American and the British lines and drove through it at a place called the Kasserine Pass, inflicting
the most serious defeat on the Allies in the entire war. It could well have been worse.
But before Rommel could capture the Allied supply depot and push on toward the coast, which was his
plan, the Italian commander in that theater ordered him to attack in a different direction and thereby
saved the Allied advance. The recon troops, as usually happens on the ground, see very little of that
strategy. They don't really know what's happening in the larger sense of the war.
They only heard about those setbacks a few days and weeks later when they learned that their commanding
general, General Friedendahl, had been replaced by a new general named Patton. After the Kasserine,
the Allies steadily closed the ring around the Axis troops in Tunis. The 91st recon was given the toughest
job, clearing a German position atop a 1,500-foot mountain known as the Jebel Ichkud.
about 25 miles south of the Zerte. Pockmarked with caves, caves filled with battle-hardened troops of
the Hermann Göring Division. The citation doesn't say where the action in which Kisters won
the Distinguished Service Cross took place, but it was likely there. After that line gave way, the Germans
began evacuating the remnants of the Afrika Korps from Tunis.
Every year it seems there's a new movie about World War II. This year's movie, my wife and I, my wife's
in the back right there. So the other, when did we watch it? Yeah, the movie's called Pressure. Have
you seen this movie? It's actually a pretty good movie. It's worth watching, but I'm going to challenge
it right now.
It's about, quote, the 72 hours before D-Day, and with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Group Captain James Stagg face an impossible choice, launch the largest
and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history or risk losing the war altogether. It's partly right.
It wasn't, however, the largest seaborne operation in world history.
not in fact even the largest seaborne operation commanded by Dwight Eisenhower. That would be the operation
in Sicily, the landing in Sicily. The drama of the movie comes from a decision about the weather. A
storm threatens to wreck the D-Day plans. But a lesson Eisenhower learned from Sicily was that if there
is bad weather, the Germans have to fight in it too.
Because in Sicily, they came ashore in a gale in the midst of a thunderstorm. And yes, people did die.
Boats were capsized. But ultimately, Eisenhower concluded, it probably saved lives. The Germans, seeing
the storm coming in, realized the Americans probably weren't going to invade today. And so they pulled
back into the interior of the island.
the Americans and the British came ashore almost unopposed and faced a counterattack the next day, but
just from the Italians, which they were able to repel. Like southern France, Sicily, and this, so Gary
Kisters was part of that invasion force, he came ashore with them, and then he drove ahead of the troops,
you have to kind of picture this, into the highlands of,
of central Sicily. And that area is dotted by these communities called perched villages, where there's
a village that's atop a mountain. And these date from the Middle Ages. In fact, if you look at Wikipedia
for the Battle of Guyana, you don't see the battle that Gary Kistors fought in. You see a battle that's
from the 11th century. So it was a place where people had fought before.
These places are absolutely beautiful unless you have to capture one. There's usually a castle or a
monastery at the very summit of it, and this would be where the Germans would set up their artillery
positions. And so the recon troops had to kind of glide in there very quickly on their fast-moving jeeps
and somehow knock those out. That was the job that they were given. The Battle for Sicily is known for these
Hilltown battles, Troina, Vizzini, Corleone, Ciarami. They were fortified by Panzer Grenadiers and General
Kesselring's strategy was to inflict as many casualties as possible and to delay the Allied advance
to try to save, to create time for the Germans to turn the tide on the eastern front, which is where
the war was really being fought.
at that time. And so that's what Guyana was. That was the battle that Gary Kistors distinguished himself
in. The lesson Patton would draw from Sicily was to bypass these strong points. When he got into France,
what he did was he just drove around them and let the Air Force come in, my dad's group come in and
handle it afterwards. They would leave a few people behind to isolate that town.
and just pulverize it with air power. So I like to think that that was Gary Kister's real triumph, that
Gallardo survived. It is today a hugely beautiful tourist attraction. Google it. It looks absolutely
stunning. Every February there's a carnival with a mass parade. Every December they have a
Mustard Festival there. All that is possible because that town was not destroyed by the Air Force. Because
Kisters took out that German anti-tank gun, Guyana would not be like San Pietro. It would not be like
Monte Cassino. It would not be demolished. It would survive, and it was because of Gary Kisters. And
I think that is his real triumph, and that's why
But I didn't know what all Nick was going to say and include in his. And it's not really in my notes,
but I have to mention it as we go forward. So one of my favorite games to play is I go to museums, and
I find a way to tie something at the museum back to either IU or Bloomington or something like that.
My family hates this game, just for the record. But it's a fun game to play. And so he mentioned the
Thompson submachine gun. And a lot of folks don't know that
Brigadier General James Taliaferro Thompson, who invented the Thompson submachine gun, did his freshman
year here at IU. His dad was a faculty member here at IU, and he eventually got accepted to West Point
and went to that school and graduated. I'm sure they're a fine institution and all, but during his time,
you know, he maybe thought about that while he was a freshman here. We'll see.
So my role is to talk about the role of veterans, those citizen soldiers in the history of our community.
What is that role? What do they do here? And so obviously I'll start at the very beginning when Bloomington
was a frontier town. And sometimes it's kind of hard to think about what Monroe County and the frontier
would look like. But keeping in mind that Indiana was settled from south to north at the point that
Bloomington was platted and people began moving to the community, Unionville was the frontier.
So that whole corner of the county didn't even belong to us yet. That was still territory that belonged
to Native American tribes. And as we moved north, that became that area. So who moves to the frontier?
Well, there's a lot of veterans that are used to what we in the military world call austere conditions,
right? They're used to living in tents. They're used to building shelters. They're used to foraging
and finding things. So the Duns,
The Maxwells, the Alexanders, many of the founding names that you know from our community were those
folks that were moving to this area. They were veterans of the revolution. They were veterans of the
War of 1812. They were citizen soldiers. They had served in these militias. The Indiana Rangers, which
were the early military force and law enforcement agency here in the state of Indiana that later Texas
copied for a more famous and splashy version. They were parts of that organization.
in those early years. By the time the Mexican-American War comes in the 1840s,
We raised two companies of citizen soldiers out of Monroe County, two companies to go to the Mexican-American
War, headed by Captain John Sluice and Captain Daniel Lunderman. Again, these are prominent local names
that would be well known. From that war, we also get our first student veterans that return.
And in this case, I'm talking about George Buskirk, who returned after having served and became one
of our first veterans to graduate from IU, and then went on to become a lawyer and a judge
and a politician here in the local community. By the Civil War, our community is large enough that here
in Monroe County, we are able to raise parts of five companies during the Civil War. Those service members
were a wide range of folks, but my favorite one of note is David Campbell van Buskirk from the Gosport
area, otherwise known as Big Dave. And why was he known as Big Dave? Because he was six foot 10.
and over 300 pounds. He was specifically recruited for a unit of very tall individuals with the psychological
idea that if they sent them into combat against the Confederates, they would be intimidated surely by
their size. That did not entirely work out. Big Dave was captured, his unit was captured, and
the Confederates charged admission in the prison camp for locals to come see him. So.
He did eventually return to Bloomington and go on to be a farmer and a local businessman for the rest
of his life.
After the war, we saw an influx of additional settlers coming to our community, which included some
of our first African-American veterans that had served with the colored troops during the war and were
returning as a part of that. We also saw our first veterans organization, the Grand Army of the Republic,
which was the Union Veterans Organization, that became a political force within the community. Many
of our early veterans monuments were erected by them. They were very active in politics. You would not
be voted sheriff if you
did not have the Grand Army's approval here in the community. So they held a lot of sway and power.
The Spanish-American War, the Mexican border expedition, we sent units there as well. By the Mexican
border expedition, we had what is today known as the National Guard unit here in town, and we were able
to send folks with that.
So World War I, in most people's mind, is sort of an easier time to think about what our role was and
what we did. And some of that's because our VFW and our American Legion chapters are both named after
local men who were killed in World War I.
And so understanding that World War I commitment and that piece of it people often get, but there's
some stories that sometimes go untold through that. One of my favorites is a young woman named Letty
Wadsworth, and Letty Wadsworth was originally from Odin, Indiana, but she moved up here to the big city
of Bloomington as a teenager. And living here in Bloomington when the war first broke out, she decided
she wanted to serve in that war as a nurse, and she got trained as a nurse, but there was one small problem.
The Americans were not yet in the war. So she joined the British Army via Canada. And she went over
and served with the British Army and then came back and said, OK, one tour is enough. I'm good. I'm
going to go to school. She started taking classes at IU. And then the Americans joined the war. And
she watched the men in the classes around her start leaving to go off to war. She decided that wasn't
good enough. She needed to go again. So she joined the American Army this time and went over and served
a second tour as a nurse in Europe during that war.
When she came back to our community, at this point, the Spanish influenza, the 1917 influenza epidemic
is sweeping through the country. And it's a misnomer to think of it as only having happened in that
year, much like COVID and other pandemics. It had reoccurring years after that in 1919, 1920, 1921,
that it came through the community. And each time it came through the community and a hospital had to
be set up, she stopped her studies.
And she helped set up and run that hospital here in our community. She went back to nursing. In 1922,
she finally acquired enough credits to graduate from the university after all these interruptions. What
did she do? She became a community nurse here in southern Indiana. And she spent the rest of her life
serving as a community nurse in Monroe County, Owen County, Lawrence County, working with families,
working with communities during epidemics, working with maternity death rates, all of these sort of
challenges that they were trying to get through.
So, World War II comes along. Now, I'm guessing most people in this room know someone, either in your
family or in this community, maybe they've passed by now, who served in World War II. I see some heads
nodding. We can probably name somebody that served in World War II that we know. Korea, Vietnam,
the Cold War, we may know some folks that served in that war as well.
How many of y'all know someone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan or someone, you don't catch it,
someone that has served in the Cold War even, right? So there's a few hands that go up, but if you're
thinking in your head, I know fewer of those people, there's a reason for that. So in World War II,
11 to 12% of the US population served in the war, in the military during that war.
11 to 12% of Bloomington at that point would have given about 18 to 20,000 people that lived in Bloomington
during World War II. So imagine out of a population of 18 to 20,000 people, 12% of them leave to go
serve in the war. And that's not including students that came in and then left to go serve in the war.
We also get an influx of people that moved to Bloomington. Bloomington's a boom town during the
Between 1940 and 1945, we increased 15% in size. By 1950, we had increased another 20%. So in a decade,
Bloomington grew by 35% during that time. So by 1950, we're at 35%. By 1970, the population of Bloomington
had doubled since 1940. And by 2000, it would double again.
Now you ask yourself, why is it that you might not know who the veterans are that have served in Iraq
or Afghanistan? About half a percent of Americans have served in the US military since 9-11.
Half a percent. So when you look at half a percent of what is arguably now somewhere between 80 to 120,000
people that live in Bloomington, depending on which census and whether you're looking at Bloomington
or Monroe County or all of that, versus 12%
when it was 20,000 people. That's a big difference. So, while in Gary Kister's time, folks would have
known. He would have, everybody knew who the veterans were. The veterans were a tight community. People
knew who they were. They were involved in these organizations. They were easy to identify. They very
often didn't have to tell people they were veterans, because everybody just sort of knew that.
Nowadays, with our current situation and what it is, there are many veterans who will identify as veterans.
They maybe wear a flag t-shirt. They have something every day that they do. But there's many of them
in that citizen soldier model that have gone on to do other things. And that is not a prominent piece
of their identity. And they just blend into our community. And given their small numbers, that is very
easy for them to do, particularly for women veterans who are often overlooked in those roles.
So it's important as we understand and we think back to the legacy of our veterans and I'm a child of
a veteran grandson of a veteran great grandson of a veteran. My family's been here since before the
revolution we've caught every war that has come along. Right. And so,
I understand that importance and that community tie in that piece of it. And at the same time, those
sort of families are harder and harder to find. Those sort of families are fewer and far between as
our military gets smaller, as we're not facing these large sizes of wars.
So it's important if we want to recognize and honor our current veterans that we also remember who the
veterans were that came before them. Because when they see communities that are honoring the veterans
that came before them, they feel that relationship, they feel that connection to what it is that they're
doing there in that moment. Thank you.
Good afternoon. I'm Justin Robertson, operations manager at the Monroe County History Center. But possibly
more topically for today, I am one of Gary Kister's nephews. And I'm very grateful to be here, and especially
grateful to everyone who showed up today. And it's great to see some familiar faces out here, some of
the kids that I was at Uncle Gary's daycare center with.
So we are here today to honor Gary Kister's service to his country. But I'd like to talk for a few minutes
about the man who came home from that service and what Gary Kister's was like as a person after the
war, as I know him. When you're eight years old, you don't really know what makes someone a hero. You
just know who your heroes are. And mine was my Uncle Gary.
My sister and I attended the daycare center that Uncle Gary and Aunt Noly ran. So we didn't just see
him at Thanksgiving and Christmas. He wasn't just some guy that showed up with a fruitcake every year.
He was part of our everyday lives. And my mother worked there, too. So we spent a great deal of time
with him. We also lived just a few blocks away from him, so he couldn't really get away from me. I was
always coming into his yard while he was gardening and stuff. But the funny thing is is,
I really didn't know that he was a war hero, at least not in the way that we are honoring him here today.
I knew he had served during World War II. I'd seen pictures of him in uniform. He looked very good in
uniform, like a movie star, which was frankly unfair to the rest of us men in the family. And I knew
there were stories about the war that the family would tell when he wasn't around. But Uncle Gary never
talked about the war to me or about being a hero.
It was almost as though he kept that part of his life separate from the people who hadn't been there
during those desperate times. So, the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, North Africa,
Italy, and all that was simply not the Gary Kisters that I knew. He was just my favorite uncle.
He was kind, gentle, generous, and fascinated by the natural world.
He seemed to have a remarkable gift for understanding the language of animals and children. And he was
a little eccentric in the best possible way. Uncle Gary was a collector who had his own cabinet
of curiosities. Rocks, minerals, fossils, gemstones, old newspapers, antique tools, and household objects.
I could go on, right? Anything that caught his attention or had a story to tell, he would collect.
President Franklin Roosevelt had given Lieutenant Gary Kistors the Medal of Honor, and General George
C. Marshall had given him the Distinguished Service Cross. But I really think his most prized possession
was his coveted piece of fossilized dinosaur excrement that he had scored in a roadside shop somewhere
in the Southwest while on one of his rock-hunting trips.
And I personally had to agree with him on this. To me, eight years old, this was the most important
material possession anyone could own. And that was what I requested to see whenever I visited him, not
his medals. I was significantly more impressed by the dinosaur poop. And in addition to this miraculous
fossil, Uncle Gary owned a fur shop.
to an eight-year-old, this was an excellent career choice. He had apparently decided he was going to
be a one-man natural history museum and not only a fur shop. There were furs everywhere in the shop
and workroom, many of them expertly tailored and stitched together by Uncle Gary himself. And he told
me about the animals they came from, where they lived, what they ate and how they behaved. And adjacent
to the shop,
was an enormous refrigerated room where the furs were stored. To an adult, this was simply climate control
storage. To us kids, it was an Arctic expedition. And we'd go hunting the yeti in it. We played in there.
And in retrospect, I realized that there are many reasons you should not allow small children to play
inside a refrigerator the size of a small apartment. I'm not quite sure that he knew that we were in there.
Uncle Gary's fascination with the natural world extended far beyond the first shop. He watched birds,
insects, and squirrels. He garden and planted flowers and trees. And at one point, my mother claims,
he built a rocking chair for the backyard squirrel. Yes, a rocking chair for the squirrel. I realize
that this sounds like something that I made up for the speech. But my mother swears that she and Uncle
Gary actually watched the squirrel sit in it.
And my Aunt Noly was considerably not amused, but the children of the daycare loved it. So how could
you not think of Uncle Gary as a hero? He was just great. He was also, in my opinion, the best gift
giver in the world, if a little eccentric in his choices. When my parents got married, Uncle Gary ignored
the wedding registry entirely. He didn't buy china. He didn't buy silver.
He certainly didn't buy one of those fondue pots everyone was crazy about in the 60s. Instead, he gave
them an original, unframed, yellowed, crumbled newspaper from 1793 announcing the beheading of the Queen
of France, Marie Antoinette. How romantic. It's exactly what a young couple needs starting out. But.
Every Christmas and for my birthday, he gave me little boxes of loose rocks, crystals, minerals,
and deodes, and I loved it. Pyrite or fool's gold was my favorite. If it was sparkly, I was at magpie,
and he knew that. And I still have a bunch of these boxes sitting around, and occasionally people come
across them, and they're just like, Justin, why do you have these boxes of rocks? Well, to me, they're
not just rocks. They're wonderful gifts from him.
And looking back, I realized that he was teaching me that the world was worth looking at closely, and
to appreciate rocks, and teaching me to appreciate lots of things that go unnoticed. And it was in this
spirit that we went to museums, nature centers, historic sites, pretty much anywhere that contained
an artifact, an animal, dead or alive, or a historic marker, which he now gets, which is fabulous.
But looking back, I blame him entirely for my career in museums. He spent years convincing me that history
and old things mattered, and I believed him. He taught me that history wasn't trapped in books or behind
glass. It was alive. It was happening right now. It was all around us. It was just waiting to be noticed.
Now I work at a history museum surrounded by old things, curious people, stories, objects, questions,
and taxidermy, thus fur. So apparently his brainwashing has been successful and I am a product of him.
He cared deeply about people, particularly children. For many years he supported a mission in Peru that
provided food, clothing, shoes, and school necessities to poor families.
He helped raise money for the mission because he couldn't bear the thought of children going hungry
or of being denied the chance to go to school. He had seen enough poverty in his lifetime, and he wanted
to do something about it. And he did. And that was my Uncle Gary. And that was also the life he and
my Aunt Noli built together. They had four amazing children, Richard, Ginger, Linda, and Judy. And they
built a life around family, work, children, and service.
Uncle Gary and Aunt Noly were partners in every sense of the word. They worked side by side for years,
both at home and in their businesses. In the morning, Uncle Gary helped with the daycare arrivals.
At noon, he helped Aunt Noly serve lunch and set up the cots for nap time. While the children slept,
Aunt Noly might help him in linings and fur coats or work on sewing and storage. And in the late afternoon,
Uncle Gary would often appear in the yard to play with the children.
and only got everything ready for them to go home. It was a busy life, but it was a life they built
together. And it was a life that was built around other people. I had grown up watching old Hollywood
movies, so I assumed war heroes were supposed to be tough and imposing. They barked orders, they stared
dramatically into the distance. Uncle Gary was not like that at all. He was calm, patient, generous.
And yet, this was the same man who had faced some of the most brutal circumstances imaginable
and demonstrated extraordinary courage in the middle of them. When I was in high school, Life magazine
published a photographic spread featuring living medal of honor recipients, and there was Uncle Gary.
I remember looking at that photograph and realizing I was looking at a person I thought I already knew.
The man that photographed was the same man who loved children, family, nature,
and fascinating things. But there in the pages of life was Gary Kisters, the war hero surrounded by
war heroes. It took me a moment to understand that these weren't two different people. They were the
same man. As a child, Uncle Gary was my hero. As a teenager, I discovered
But I wasn't the only one who thought he was a hero. He had been a hero to the nation for 30 years before
I was even born. And while I was initially a little resentful that the rest of the world seemed to have
discovered my uncle before I did, that feeling quickly gave way to immense pride. And the older I get,
the more remarkable his life after the war seems to me. Because he was a rather shy and humble man,
he wasn't particularly interested in being important. He was interested in doing good.
He cared deeply about his family and his faith. He cared about children. He cared about people he had
never met in Peru. He appreciated all the strange and wonderful things most people walk right past.
And he was interested in everything else except himself. Courage does not always look the way we expect
it to. Sergeant Kister showed extraordinary courage when the world demanded it of him. But the man I
knew showed me another kind of courage.
The courage to remain kind, generous, and engaged in the world. After seeing so much of what was terrible
in the world, he spent the rest of his life paying attention to what was wonderful about it. And he
continued to give of himself. And I think that that's a remarkable way to live. And maybe that's why,
all these years later, when I think of Gary Kisters, I don't think first about medals. I think about
dinosaur poop.
And how lucky he was to have had that. And I think about a man who came home from the brutality of war
and remained one of the most unique and kindest people I have ever known. That is Gary Kisters, the
man I knew. And that is the hero I wanted to share with all of you today. And now there are people in
the audience that are part of his family. Three of his children are here. Dick's not here.
Is he? OK. So we have Judy and Ginger right up here. And then Linda is in the back. And then we have
several of his grandchildren that I was in the daycare center with, although they were much smaller
than me. And they are all here. We have Lisa and Betsy and Karen and Deborah and Michael. Is there anyone
else that I can't see? I'm sorry?
And Lauren, OK. I'm sorry I can't see you back there, Lauren. So thank you very much. I appreciated
sharing Uncle Gary with you. As I said, he was one of my favorite people ever. So thank you for coming
out. Thanks to all three of you guys. And that's the formal part of the program today, except for the snacks.
But if any of you would like to share a memory of Gary Kister's, you're welcome to do it. We don't want
to go on and on. But if you do, please come up here. I'll just stand here. Justin reminded me of something.
I had the privilege of living next to his aunt and uncle at 609 North Dunn. And that was in 1979.
And I always noticed this gentle man that would have a little kid in his arm with his shirt off, being
just the coolest guy. He was always working in his garden. And the important story, as you told it,
Justin, was also about Noli, who was a partner of his. I'm glad you said something about the crystals,
because I have one.
In my previous life, I was on Bloomington City Council from 1980 to 87. And Jerry knocked on my door
one day and said, I guess you're the guy I need to talk to. So I said, sure. So he lived at the corner
of 10th and Dunn. And there was some problems with the drainage at 10th and Dunn.
capacity as his city councilman, I called up Public Works, John Freeman, and said, hey, do you have
to help me? We need to take care of this issue. And it was done
Yeah, I got to know him. I literally lived next door to him. And, you know, I saw the kids. And it was
just, you know, he was a gentle soul. And Noli was an incredible person. And they were just wonderful
human beings. So thank you for that interview. Anyone else?
Linda that's actually documented by one of the people in his battalion they recall Winston Churchill
came to the
and then zipped up and turned back around and said, hey, thanks. Wasn't he a painter? I think he was
painting then, when he asked Dad for a light. Because Dad was standing, I think Dad was supposed to
be protecting him or something, while he was painting. And he asked Dad for a light, and Dad said,
oh man, I don't smoke. Why don't I smoke?
Why don't I smoke? Okay. Well, thank you for coming today. This has been great. Thank you so much. We'll
be around if you want to chat with each other, with us, with Kister's family, get something to eat and
drink. And thank you so much for coming today.