This story begins with a simple question: Who from Lake County died in World War II?

The answer is complex, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the answers are complex.

When I asked this question of Lake County’s Veterans’ Service Office, Nancy Mitchell responded with two lists compiled by the National Archive and Records Administration (NARA).

One list shows Army personnel and the other lists the Navy personnel. There are 28 names between the two lists.

The NARA’s Army list provides these names: Clement W. Anderson, Duane L. B. Anderson, Varges Anderson, Donald H. Barnes, Hubert D. Bell, Joseph T. Beuter, Wayland R. Clem, Thomas C. Ferron, Ralph M. Gallette, Lester D. Grigsby, Lawrence E. Harris, A. M. Hendricks Jr., Charles A. Mach, Merwin McKee, Willard G. Megown, Harvey R. Mosher, Charles F. Nordahl, Louis F. Patriquin, Robert W. Pinckney, Edward F. Simons, Donald G. Simpson, Kenneth L. Steadman, Stephen L. Stockton, Charlie C. Williams and Herbert N. Wilson.

From NARA files come the names of Lake County’s Navy, Marine and Coast Guard casualties: Charles H. McBee, Eric C. Peterson and Merrill C. Rannells.

With these names and this information, what else can be learned about these men and their families? Who were their parents, their siblings, their wives and children? Where had they lived in Lake County? When were they born and where did they go to school?

The censuses for 1940, 1930, 1920 and 1910 are available online and filled in pieces of many puzzles.

The Index to Births, Marriages and Deaths in Lake County Newspapers shows that local newspapers published obituaries for the men. More names turned up in the pages of old Lake County newspapers on microfilm at Lakeport Library.

More research shows that the simple original question becomes complex. Some of these men don’t seem to have lived in Lake County at all. Some seem to have had relatives here and used Lake County as a home of record.

Other names are not on the NARA lists because some men had left Lake County and used other homes of record when they enlisted, but the local newspapers published obituaries about them.

Some names not on the NARA list appear in the Clear Lake Union High School’s Cardinal and Black memorial sections during WWII.

Lake County men who died during the war but who are not on the NARA lists are: James E. Butler, Ray Ege, Donald Fish, “Teddy” Flodberg, William S. Harrison, Ted Martin, Sydney Stokes and Donald Woods.

Clerical errors may account for some of the discrepancies. Hubert D. Bell appears on the NARA Army list with Lake County, Calif., as his home of record.

In the 1930s a man named Hubert Edwin Bell, born in 1917 in California, lived in Lake County, Calif. He is probably the Hubert Bell who enlisted in 1942 in San Francisco. He died in 1979 in Lake County.

A Hubert Dale Bell, born in 1924 in West Virginia, is probably the man on the NARA list because the serial numbers match. To add to the fun, another Hubert Bell, born in 1922 in Alabama, lived in Lake County, Florida, in 1940.

Local newspapers tell more of the stories about Lake County’s casualties, who died around the world, in all theaters of the war and in the United States.

Tom Ferron died in the crash of training flight in New Mexico. Sydney Stokes died of “polio of the throat” in an Army hospital in Texas.

Lake County lost Joe Beuter, Charles Mach, Ted Martin, Merrill Rannells and Donald Woods in the South Pacific, from New Guinea to Iwo Jima. The war in the Philippines claimed Donald West, Lester Grigsby and Archie Hendricks.

Others died in Europe, some on the ground, some in the air over Germany, Italy and Belgium. Some were prisoners of war and others were missing in action, their fates not known for many months.

Some are buried in Lake County, others in military cemeteries on foreign soil.

They served in the infantry, the Marines, the Navy and in the Air Corps. Archie Hendricks, an expert horseman, taught cavalry warfare in the Philippines as a member of the 26th Cavalry. Donald Simpson served in the famed 10th Mountain Division.

This story is still a work in progress. For some of these men there is much information both online and in other sources. For others, almost nothing has yet been found. Perhaps other names have not been found yet.

There are more chapters to write in this story.

Jan Cook has lived in Lake County for about 40 years. She works for the Lake County Library, is the editor of the Lake County Historical Society's Pomo Bulletin and is a history correspondent for Lake County News. If you have questions or comments please contact Jan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .