Following his service in the Marine Corps during World War II, Richard W. Fisher graduated from Ohio Northern University and worked for the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad. In 1957, he went to work at Ford Motor Co. in Lima.
On a cloudy, chilly Monday in November 1945, Lima wrapped up its first peace-time observance of Armistice Day since 1941 with a parade featuring the bands of Central and South high schools, the American Legion drum and bugle corps, and veterans of the armed forces.
“Made up primarily of veterans of World War I, the formations were generously sprinkled with the olive drab, blue and dress Marine uniforms of World War II veterans,” the Lima News wrote November 13, 1945.
Some 16 million Americans served during World War II and, on Armistice Day in 1945, many had still not made their way home from overseas. One of these was Richard W. Fisher, who was on occupation duty in Japan after participating in the final fierce battles in the Pacific as U.S. forces closed in on the Japanese home islands.
Fisher enlisted at the age of 17 in June 1943, dropping out of South High School to join the U.S. Marine Corps. After his discharge in February 1946, he returned to his home on Broadway Street in Lima and resumed his interrupted life.
And, like many combat veterans, he didn’t talk about what he did during the war. For the past several years his daughter has been on a journey of her own, scouring archives and web sites and making calls on a quest for information to fill in the missing years.
Home from the war, Fisher earned his high school diploma, graduated from Ohio Northern University, and ended a troubled marriage he had entered during the war. He remarried in 1950, took a job with the Erie Railroad, and, in 1953, made an unsuccessful bid for the Sixth Ward seat on Lima City Council. In 1957, Fisher went to work for the Ford Motor Co. in Lima.
By 1980, Armistice Day, established to mark the day World War I ended, had become Veterans Day and World War II veterans, still numbering around 12 million, represented the largest group of American veterans. Inevitably, though, the numbers were dwindling. Every year more chairs were empty at reunions of World War II units.
In 1980, when the veterans of Marine Night Fighter Squadron 542 got together, Fisher wasn’t there. He died suddenly on March 1, 1980, at the age of 54. Among those he left behind were his wife, Carolyn Taylor Fisher, two sons, James and Steven, and a daughter, Peggy.
Although his gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery is marked “U.S. Marine Corps – World War II,” his obituary did not mention that he was a Marine Corps veteran of World War II, which was not surprising because, according to his daughter, who was a teenager when her father died, he didn’t talk much about it either.
Peggy Ehora said she was aware her father had been a Marine; he kept his hair cropped close and his shoes perpetually shined, she said. She and her brothers all knew the Marine Corps hymn as well as other, saltier military songs that he would occasionally sing, but other than that it was hazy.
After her father’s death, Ehora got on with life, graduating from Ohio University, marrying, raising a son, and working. She also served on the Lima city school board and currently represents the 4th Ward on Lima City Council.
Then, around 2019, she began a quest of piecing together her father’s service. “We knew very, very little about where he had been,” Ehora said. “My brothers and I would always talk about how sorry we were that we didn’t know more and outside of a book of snap shots from the war and a Japanese flag in the cedar chest we didn’t have much to go on.”
Ehora was steered to the National Archives through internet searches and that request yielded primarily information about his discharge in 1946. Ehora was disappointed, but not completely discouraged. The search was re-energized last year when she came across some of his military information in a picture box that had belonged to her mother, who died in 2014.
One paper, which turned out to be the World War II equivalent of a DD214 (military service record), stated he had “participated in action against the enemy on Okinawa from May to July of 1945 and the Western Carolinas in October of 1944.
A subsequent conversation with her father’s only living sibling confirmed that he had indeed been a part of some horrific things while serving in World War II. “We were discussing the search with my Aunt Genie (Imogene Swick), who was six years younger than my dad and was still at home when he was discharged in 1946,” Ehora said. “She shared a couple stories he had shared with her when he got home, and we were just stunned.”
Ehora sought the help of friends who served in the military, and they made phone calls on her behalf. She visited the Veteran’s Services Office at the Allen County Courthouse, learned Ancestry has a partnership with the National Archives, which became another resource, and ultimately used the services of a research company that produced 64 pages of information describing where he had been and when.
“The biggest eye-opener was his service in aviation ordnance for the Marine Night Fighter Squadron (n) 542,” she said. “All of my veteran friends kept saying this is a very big deal, so I just keep digging.”
Ehora is still awaiting the formal response from the National Archives so she can replicate the medals he earned to put it all together in a way that not only honors his service but preserves the history for generations to come.
“This journey has given my brothers and I an opportunity to know our dad in a way we never had a chance to learn,” she said. “Being able to gift this information to my son, who is the spitting image of my dad, brings tears to my eyes.”
In 2023, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 119,550 World War II veterans were still alive, less than one percent of those who served. “Every day, memories of World War II are disappearing from living history,” according to the National World II Museum’s web site.
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SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
LEARN MORE
See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
