The Ohls and World War II
Ferris was raised on Rt 103 about 2 miles west of Lykens. He and his brother and two sisters are the children of George and Josie (Solze) Ohl.
One of the big events of his childhood happened when he was six years old. The family moved their house and all their outbuildings from one end of their farm to the other a distance of a half a mile. This took the whole summer and was done with skids and one horse. The new location was one half mile closer to the stop where a horse drawn vehicle took children to school and on a more traveled road. His dad raised wheat and corn and soybeans and did their own butchering. They had chickens. They took their wheat and corn to a local mill to be ground. They had a well and a cistern. The cistern water was soft water, used for washing clothes, and the well water, which was hard, was used for drinking.
During the depression, Ferris remembers that things were so tight that they almost lost the farm. They made very small payments to the bank to keep afloat. His father did all the work on the farm with horses and when mechanized machinery came to be in use, rather than make a big investment in the machinery, his father retired and leased his land to a neighbor.
Ferris went to Lykens School where he was active in the band, choir and athletics. He also took piano lessons from a teacher who traveled around to the pupils' houses. Ferris' sister, Gladys Ohl, after a brief time away, lived with her parents and took care of them. She was the art teacher at Columbian High School for many years.
Dorothy was raised in a small town, Pioneer, in Williams County near Bryan by her father, Luther Doolittle and her mother Flossie (Double) Doolittle. Her father sold pianos and tuned them. He also sold band instruments. Dorothy started taking piano lessons at the age of five from her father's sister. Just as the Depression hit, he had bought a truckload of pianos on credit, and he had to send them back at a loss. Things were tight for the family and her mother got a job as clerk for the village. .
Ferris went on to attend Heidelberg and graduated in 1936. His first teaching job was at Pioneer High School where Dorothy was a student. He received his draft notice in 1940 but was deferred until June, 1941 when he entered the army. Dorothy attended Heidelberg for two years, 1940 –1942. Then she and Ferris were married May 24, 1942 and she followed him wherever the army sent him.
When Ferris first went into the army, after basic training at Camp Wolters in Mineral Wells, TX, he was with fellow music teachers from the same area and they formed a quartet and he taught bugle. Then, after Pearl Harbor, all the musicians were sent to other duties. A Chaplain at the base gave Ferris advice which possibly saved his life. His fellow musicians were sent overseas and ended up as stretcher bearers, and most of them lost their life in the early days of the war. The chaplain advised Ferris to apply for officer's training school.
He was sent to Officer's Training School at Fort Benning, Georgia and received his 2nd. Lieutenant's bars. The army granted him a ten day leave to go home and get married, but as preparations were underway for the wedding, his leave was cut to five days. Ferris and Dorothy were married May 24th, 1942, and immediately drove all night to Camp Pickett, VA where he reported for duty with the 79th Infantry Division at 7 AM.
One of his initial duties was to help build the camp. Dorothy's job was to find housing off base and locate food stamps, gasoline stamps, and other necessities. She learned to travel light. Each time they moved, they took all their belongings in the car, a 1940 faded maroon Chevrolet sedan. which lasted them through the war.
Then Ferris and his division were sent to Camp Blanding near Gainesville, Fl. There . Ferris remembers ten mile hikes with full pack in the sand. Each time they put their foot down, they slid back half the distance of their stride.
To be continued
Percy & Mary