A Soldier's Belated Funeral

On November 6, 1920, a telegram from New York reached F.B. and Carrie Price on their Ainsworth farm: the body of their fallen soldier, their son James, was again on American soil. That day the ship bearing his coffin had docked. A U.S. soldier would accompany his remains to Crown Point.

The News now suggested that it was influenza that had killed him, not the wound he received in action, or nephritis, or exposure. (The Gazette merely said that he had recovered from his wound sufficiently to return to service, but then was "taken ill" and died at Base Hospital No. 22.)

The journey from New York home took nearly two weeks. On Friday, November 19, James' coffin arrived at his parents' home.

So many people came to the funeral on the afternoon of Sunday, November 28, that the Merrillville Methodist Church could not hold them all, and some were left outside. Seventy-five American Legion members were there, from the Hobart and Crown Point posts. Among the pallbearers were George Tabbert and Otto Sizelove of Hobart, both of them veterans; George said that James' company had relieved his detachment during fighting in the Argonne forest, where James was wounded.

James Price was finally laid to rest in the Merrillville cemetery.


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Sources:
♦ "Card of Thanks." Hobart News 2 Dec. 1920.
♦ "Funeral of James I. Price Will Be Held at Merrillville, Sunday Afternoon." Hobart News 25 Nov. 1920.
♦ "Funeral of Jas. Price Next Sunday." Hobart Gazette 26 Nov. 1920.
♦ "James I. Price, Who Died in France, to Be Buried at Merrillville." Hobart News 11 Nov. 1920.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 2 Dec. 1920.
♦ "Merrillville Items." Lake County Star 3 Dec. 1920.
♦ "Remains of Jas. Price Brought Home." Hobart Gazette 12 Nov. 1920.