iPentimento | Genealogy and History

Low Moor, Iowa is the epitome of small town America. A post office, the city park that doubles as a ball field (with the local farmer’s corn field snug up against the property line), and a nicely appointed community center where they hold Sunday chicken dinners, especially on Low Moor Days.  My apologies for the quality of the scanned picture, but when I wrote to the Clinton Herald newspaper I received no reply to my request for a digital copy of their photo.

This year’s celebration of Low Moor Days included a parade that included three World War Two veterans as grand marshals. That man in the middle is my father-in-law, Loren Wilkerson.

Loren served in the Navy on the Cape Esperance in the South Pacific, including the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. It was on that ship that he and the crew encountered one of the Pacific’s typhoons. He doesn’t talk about that storm much, other than to say he was mighty scared.

Loren Wilkerson c. 1944 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Born in 1925, Loren was just a young guy all of the age of 19 when he joined the Navy.  As the oldest of 10 children he had been making his way on his own for many years, but going to war and being thousands of miles from dry land had to be somewhat of a culture shock.

Loren Wilkerson 1943

I am proud of all the veterans in our family, and whenever I have an opportunity to meet a vet outside of our family, I make it a point to say “thank you”. That’s what they did in Low Moor this July, the whole town said “thank you” to these three men. Good for them!