Today we’ll tell you about the town of Greece during World War II.
Panorama of the Opening of the World War II Exhibit – Presenting the Colors
Aerial view of Long Pond Road at Latta where Wegmans supermarket is today, 1940s, from the Office of the Town Historian
Encompassing more than 50 square miles, the town of Greece in 1940 was primarily made up of farms and the population was 14,925 as of the 2010 census the town of Greece’s Population was 96,095 people that’s 3,905 people shy of 100,000 people in the town.
The town was protected by a ten-member police force led by the town’s first police chief, Milton Carter, and four volunteer fire companies.
Chief Milton Carter (Right)
Charlotte High School, Lake Ave 1940sAerial view of John Marshall High School Ridgeway Ave Rochester, NY
There were nine churches. However, there was no town public library, nor high schools; students attended Charlotte or John Marshall High Schools in the city.
That meant if you went to school at one of the many smaller elementary schools or 1 and 2-room schools in the town of Greece you by the time it came for 9th grade you would either end up doing trade by the 9th grade or attend High School at Charlotte High School on Lake Ave in the Villiage of Charlotte prior to 1916 and in 1916 it would have been under the City of Rochester or attended John Marshall High School on Ridgeway Ave in the City of Rochester. More on the education system prior to the modern education system in a 2 part snapshot coming soon.
There were 39 registered organizations for men, women, and young people including a large chapter of the American Legion, eleven PTAs, political clubs, Grange Hall, Boys and Girls Scouts, and Fireman’s Associations as well as 38 church-related groups.
Grange Hall on Ridge Road, 1945, from the Office of the Town Historian
That All changed on December 7, while it was just getting to lunchtime on the East Coast the sun was just coming, on that day Stanley Hwalek one of the veterans that we interviewed for the exhibit was stationed at Pearl Harbor here is a quote from him in 2015 for the exhibit and you can read his entire veteran’s profile by picking up a copy of Our Town in World War 2 book in the museum gift shop.
Picture of Stanley Hwalek taken in 2015 for the exhibit
“Well, December 7th was just a regular Sunday morning. We were up at 6:00 because on Sundays they let us sleep a half hour longer. Usually during the rest of the week, reveille was at 5:30, but Sunday you were able to sleep until 6 o’clock and they had breakfast from 6:30 until 7:30. After breakfast, I went out on deck with one of my shipmates and I had the morning newspaper. As I’m reading the paper there about 7:30 or so I looked up, we were near this Navy air station at Ford Island, I saw a lot of smoke coming out of the hangars. I said to my shipmate, ‘Look. The Army must be having maneuvers or something because they’re making a lot of smoke out there.’ All of a sudden a plane comes over our ship and starts strafing.”
Stanley was one of the many veterans that survived the attack at Pearl Harbor that December 7th, 1941. On Monday, December 8th, 1941 in a full joint session of Congress President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the Nation and asked for Congress to approve the Declaration of War against Japan and to respond to the attacks at Pearl Harbor.
Headline from Greece Press, December 12, 1941
Grecians answered the call to join the war effort. By March 1942, 1500 men and women had volunteered for civilian defense positions.
By the end of 1944, town residents had collected 165.5 tons of scrap metal, 384 tons of waste paper, 3 tons of rubber, 4 tons of old rags, and 200 bags of milkweed. This gun, captured from Germany during World War I, was donated to the war effort for scrap metal. These stats are from Accept, Buy and Volunteer: The Homefront Experience of the Town of Greece, New York, 1941-1945 by Timothy Dobbertin.
Gordon Howe, Town Supervisor, lays a wreath on Memorial Day at the Town Hall, 1941, from the Office of the Town Historian
Victory Garden Enrollment Form, Greece Post, March 20, 1942
Residents were encouraged to plant Victory Gardens with vegetables, but to also continue to grow ornamental flowers as they would be morale boosters.
Headline, Greece Post, March 20, 1942
By the spring of 1942, 300 had enrolled. By the spring of 1944, there were more than 25 acres of Victory Gardens under cultivation in the town.
The Odenbach Shipyard was the main employer in Greece during the war years, employing thousands of workers at the 4477 Dewey Avenue plant. They made cargo barges, Y-boats, and cranes for the United States Army. At the height of production, they averaged one ship every two weeks.
Kodak, Bosch & Lomb, were also employing workers from Greece and other parts of the community as well but because of the City Annexation of where Kodak’s Lake ave facilities were, they were no longer considered the main employer located in the town boundaries.
Workers at Odenbach Shipbuilding Corp., 1943, from the Office of the Town Historian
The flag of stars flew at Greece Town Hall to call attention to the number of Greece Men and Women in service during World War II. Additional stars were added as the numbers grew. From Left to Right Town Supervisor Gordon Howe, Police Chief Milton Carter, and Lucius Bagley World War I Veteran
Almost 2,000 town residents served in the military.
War Mothers Service Organization, 1943, from the Office of the Town Historian
Families waited at home hoping and praying for the safety of their husbands, sons, and brothers.
Thirty-four Greece residents made the ultimate sacrifice for their county. They were:
Clip 45:
Back Cover of Our Town in World War II
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, there are now only about 150,000 still living. In 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of VE day, the Greece Historical Society opened Our exhibit, Our Town in World War II.
In the Video, we Hear from William Sauers the President of the Greece Historical Society & Museum. Don Riely, was our Master of the Ceremony. Color Gaurd from VFW Post 468. 2015 Greece Town Supervisor William D. Reilich Speaking about what it was like on the homefront during World War II. Jack Foy talked out his tour of duty during World War II. Senator Joe Robach read the list of 32 soldiers. Finally Maureen Whalen the exhibit chair gave a brief overview of the exhibit. can view the entire program below.
Twelve veterans of the war were interviewed for the exhibit. Today, only one of them is still living. But their recorded interviews are available at our museum.
You can explore a digital copy of the museum exhibit that is located in the past exhibits section.
We had a great turnout for the exhibit and when the museum went to the Museum Association of New York the following year we received an award for the exhibit.
You may read about these vets and Greece during the war years in the Society’s publication Our Town in World War II by Maureen Whalen and Marie Poinan.
Thank you for joining us today. Next week our topic is Paddy Hill, What a journey we have had so far exploring the History of Greece through each snapshot that Maureen Whalen and myself Pat Worboys, and thanks to Joesph Vitello, William Sauers, and many our other contributors to these snapshots. These help you learn what life was like through different eras in the town of Greece.
This week we continue looking at the hotel/inn/speakeasy/tavern that occupied the southeast corner of Latta and North Greece Road. This establishment went thru at least the same amount or more owners as the Larkin Hotel. The spot where the Larkin stood became this hotel’s parking lot when the Larkin Hotel was demolished.
This hotel would be a bit bigger than the Larkin Hotel/Tavern the Larkin would have been the same size as the Rowe Tavern this one was feature in both Ada Ridge and the Ridge Part 1 and Streb Tavern on the ridge which would have been approximately 1,514.47 square feet compared to the Hotel Demay at the end of its life was approximately 8,046.63 square feet. The North Greece Hotel had less than 50 rooms that travelers would stay in to enjoy food and drinks, then rest and set off on their next leg of their travel to either Niagara Falls or heading east towards Syracuse or other points east along the lake shore. It appears that the North Greece Hotel opened its doors around 1900 1912 at the corner of Latta and North Greece Roads. Because by opening day, January 5, 1910, it was called the Moerlbach Hotel after the new Rochester Brewery that provided the hotel with the beer it served. The Moerlbach Brewing Company opened its doors in 1909 at the corner of Emerson and Norman Steet where T & L Automatics Inc stands today just a few buildings down from where a descendant of Giddon King grew up and that descendant would be Helen Slocum. To learn more about when breweries abounded in Rochester, in the article Rochester aims to recapture its rich brewery history check out this article from Brain Sharp and Will Cleveland on the Democrat and Chronicle website at 8:21 am on April 6, 2018, which features some more information on the Moerlbach Brewing Company.
Morelbach’s ad in the Democrat & Chronicle Tuesday, January 25, 1910
Now back to more on the Hotel with many names as we noted it was named Morelbach and its first proprietor was Frank Pye but he passed away in 1910. The hotel was sold to William “Bill Carroll of Frisbee Hill Road a near neighbor to Edward Frisbee who we will get to in another snapshot or two. When William Carroll bought the hotel he moved his family to North Greece four corners. William Carroll was born in 1872 and his family was a pioneer family that settled in the Parma Braddock Bay area in the early 1800s. In this picture, you can see William Carroll and his son in front of the hotel.
The Odenbachs owned a hotel and an ice cream stand out at the end of Manitou Beach Road where William Carroll worked before he became the owner of the Moerlbach Hotel it was at the Manitou Beach Hotel where he introduced Sherrif Albert Skinner to the Ice Cream Cone no details of what flavor it would have been either Chocolate or Vanilla ice cream. It wasn’t until 1915 that he decided it would be best to revert it to the North Greece Hotel. The Frist Manitou Beach hotel was lost in a suit between Skinner and the Odenbachs, so the Odenbachs had to rebuild the hotel over and some distance from the now Elmheart Hotel that the Skinners now owned more on the Manitou Beach and the Elmheart Hotels in a future snapshot.
The Carrolls served meals at the hotel but only to guests, they could only serve 18 to 20 people in the dining room due to the size it was. One of the most served items in the dining room was claimed to be “The Best New England Clam Chowder in the town of Greece.” It cost only 20 cents. But the neighbors around the hotel would bring kettles to the back door to the kitchen to get them some of Mary’s Clam Chowder.
William Carroll had some strict rules in his hotel. One of the rules was No Children in the Barroom and that included his own children this was probably due to the drinking, smoking, and language of the older gentlemen. One of his other strict rules was towards women, if he saw or caught a woman smoking anywhere in the hotel, he would ask her to leave the hotel.
The was Dancing every Friday night in the dance room otherwise known now as a banquet room these days, each week it could be square dancing, rounds, fox trots, or waltzes, or thru out the night, it could change depending on the music, or who was playing on the stage playing the music. It cost each couple 50 cents to dance the night away starting at 9 pm sharp and ending at 3 am but with drink service cut off at 11 pm in accordance with New York State Law for serving your wines, beers, spirits, and hard drinks, minus water though that they could keep serving after drink service was cut off to the patrons. At intermission during the dances, a table would be set up with refreshments and Hors D’oeuvres in the dance room.
In the Bar room area, there were two pool tables its uncertain if they were for the game of snooker style billiards table or if it is the common pool style billiards table that people would try the game of billiards whether it was a round of 8-ball, 9-ball, 7-ball or the game of snooker billiards at least the tables were not the bumper style table, and if you are interested one of the many types billiard games you can play by going to your local library and checking out a copy of Billiards: The Official Rules and Record Book 2021/2022 edition or any of the other Billiard books in the library.
In the barn behind the hotel, he would have livestock auctions featuring local cattle owners for locals to buy the livestock to have it slaughtered for meat, or those new owners could raise the cattle themselves and have a pasture of their own for their farms. There were a number of different livestock at these auctions. Some were cows, bison, deer, chickens, pigs, sheep, lamb, and even horses that were auctioned off at these cattle auctions the bidders did have to watch out for diseases. Once in a while, there might be regular auctions like household gear, and artwork as well.
That’s Carroll and his son in front of the hotel in this photo
More on the Elmheart Hotel where Carroll worked before coming here.
The cover of a promotional booklet for the Manitou Hotel, the 1920s, or the cover of a menu from the 1940s from the Office of the Town HistorianBarroom Postcard from eBayLady Smoking a cigarette 1910s from eBayLe Billard painted by Jean Béraud
William Carroll sells hotel to Wilson Hilton Record 1921 July 28Opening of the Domino Inn
On January 17, 1920, Prohibition was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933. Led by pietistic Protestants, they aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, family violence, and saloon-based political corruption. Nowadays you can still see side effects of people that get drunk or have too much to drink, from Alcohol poisoning to DUI/DWI and other Alcohol related issues. It forced restaurants, bars, saloons, and other establishments to stop selling and serving alcohol products except for those that decide the Protestants did not have the best interest in their mind that Alcohol was like any other addiction, like smoking, chewing tobacco, gambling, and others. Some of the backers of prohibition were soda/pop, tea, and coffee makers, as well as the Protestants. Opposition from the beer industry mobilized “wet” supporters from the wealthy Roman Catholic and German Lutheran communities, as well as the local breweries like Moerlbach, and Genesee just to name a few as well as local restaurants, taverns, hotels, inns, saloons, and bars. But on July 28th, 1921 William Carroll decides to sell his hotel to Harry “Spike” Wilson and Louis Imhoof. Harry Wilson ran another hotel in the Brighton Twelve Corners neighborhood for several years. Harry received possession on August 1st, 1921 and on September 1st, 1921, Harry “Spike” Wilson and Louis Imhoof set to open the North Greece Hotel as the Domino Inn. Sometime during prohibition, it changed owners again and this time it became the Cosmo Inn. More on the Domino Inn and the Cosmo Inn will appear in a snapshot about prohibition.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act, known as the Cullen–Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of 3.2% beer (3.2% alcohol by weight, approximately 4% alcohol by volume) and light wines. The Volstead Act previously defined an intoxicating beverage as one with greater than 0.5% alcohol. The 18th amendment was repealed on December 5, 1933 as part of the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This was 6 years before the beginning of the second World War. At this time the hotel was remodeled again and opened as the Corner House Hotel and in this ad here look at the line after good food notice it says All Legal Beverages this meant any legal beverages that the State of New York allowed them to serve after prohibition was over. In 1939 World War would break out and it would cause companies to ration gas and other products that were needed for soldiers on the front lines both on the European and Asian fronts this caused the Corner House Hotel to close its doors in 1941. But just one year after the end of World War II in 1945 it would be sold again but this time to Ray and Irene DeMay, it would stay open until the early 2000s, and in November of 2017 it would be demolished for a proposed Crosby’s Convenience store and gas station but nothing has been built there as of this Bicentennial Snapshot published on August 30th, 2022. More On The DeMay Hotel and Banquet space in Snapshot # 25 – The DeMay Hotel.
For years during the 20th century, many communities in our area had their own airports ranging from grassy fields to paved run ways with hangers to store airplanes. Hilton had the Hilton Airport on Burritt Road. The Brizee airport in Pittsford was on Marsh Road. In Henrietta, there was the Hylan Airport and the short-lived Genesee Airfield. Woodward Field was well-known in Leroy; even Honeoye Falls had a small airfield. Let’s not forget the very early Britton Field on Scottsville Road organized by former Greece Supervisor Willis Britton.
What about the Town of Greece? Our first known airfield was run by WW I Ace, Roy DeVal, located in the Shoremont area in 1927. It had one of the first hangers in Monroe County. During the 1960s and 70s, the Greenleaf Flying Club had a private field on Kuhn Road. Of course, there were other landing areas on private farmland.
The largest and most infamous in the Town of Greece was located at the Southeast corner of Ridgeway Avenue and Lee Roads.
Shortly after WW II, Richard (Dick) Kaiser opened Ridgeway Air Park. At the time many veteran pilots
were looking for a place to store their planes or just a convenient field to land and rest, and this seemed to be an ideal spot. The place had a small hangar and at one time 16 private planes were quartered there.
But by the summer of 1947, neighbors began to complain about the low-flying planes over their homes. In July The Greece Press reported that the Town Board received petitions from the residents of the Latona Tract and Koda Vista neighborhood, citing flights allegedly created by the airpark that were “detrimental to the physical and mental health of the residents, especially children.” They wanted the place closed down.
Kaiser claimed that Ridgeway fliers were getting blamed unfairly for the low-flying acrobatics, but eventually did change the flight patterns of the planes flying in and out of the air park. This seemed to have calmed down the nearby residents.
However, a tragic accident occurred in October of 1947 when an Army Air Corps veteran flew too low while coming in for a landing and crashed into the Erie Canal embankment just north of the landing field killing himself and an 18-year-old passenger.
In June of 1948, a social organization, the Greece Aero Club, was formed at the airpark, and in August of ’48, Jim Earl, also an Army veteran, took over ownership of the place. But soon news reports about the airpark vanished.
Dick Kaiser and his wife, June, eventually moved to Utah. By 1956 Kiser’s wife, also a pilot, was flying in (I kid you not)a “Power Puff Derby” in Salt Lake City and Dick was employed by a company in Utah.
We are not sure when or what exactly ultimately ended the life of this airfield. There were reports of young boys using the “old field” for radio-controlled planes in 1955. Industrial expansion eventually took over the airfield land, forever covering any evidence of it ever having existed. Now, three-quarters of a century has all but eliminated hearing personal stories of the Ridgeway Air Park.
Ration coupons, victory gardens, salvage drives, saving cooking fat, “buy bonds today.” All familiar words to a home front generation during World War II. Unlike our wars since, World War II affected every single person in this country, and no matter what your occupation or financial status, everyone had to deal with rationing. Rationed items included basic commodities like sugar and butter, but nothing affected the lives of people in the suburbs more than gas rationing.
People would complain a little when there was no sugar, but they knew it was for a good cause. But lack of gasoline meant a complete change in lifestyle. Suburban towns like Greece had no parks, and no major stores, even a Sunday drive in the country was out of the question. In fact, for a while, any pleasure driving was banned.
Soon one neighborhood in the Town of Greece decided that if the gasoline shortage wouldn’t permit driving around the country for fun, it was high time the neighbors got acquainted and figured out what to do about it.
In January 1943, this group held their first meeting; about 27 couples comprised the group which tentatively called itself the “Briarcliff Club” as most members lived on Briarcliff Road. A monthly meeting was agreed on and plans dis cussed for various kinds of outings and entertainment.
A two-hour sleigh ride was the group’s first social activity; the Greece Press reported that “the merrymakers startled the countryside ringing with Sweet Adeline and progressed through a long repertoire of other classical and modern melodies.” They ended their day with a fish fry at the Barnard Exempts.
Throughout the next year, they planted a “Victory Garden at the Barnard Except Home, participated in bowling parties, had neighborhood picnics, held a street dance and a clam bake, and sometimes traveled in a group to a county park. A Christmas party was held at the Valleywood Club on nearby Boxart Street and, at Christmas, Santa himself visited all the children on the street and shared Christmas cheer with each of the adults. Stories were told for years after that Santa was quite a bit jollier toward the end of his journey down the street than at the beginning.
An August 1943 softball game against the Strathmore Drive Athletic Club resulted in a loss. No one will ever know for sure, but several of the Red Wing team members lived on Strathmore Drive, which may have helped that team win.
It wasn’t until March of 1944 that they had to hold a party in honor of the first member of the group to leave for the armed forces.
It didn’t take long for the group to discover they couldn’t find any better company if they drove for miles and used tanks full of Uncle Sam’s precious gasoline. In August 1945, a sausage roast and street dance were held, but the War was over by then and the reason for the Briarcliff Club, gas rationing, had ended. Soon some of the neighbors moved away, others began to relish the freedom a family could enjoy with their automobiles. The Briarcliff Club just faded away, but not the memories and the stories told to their children of how they made the best of their situation during the War. What stories are you telling your children today?
Bill Sauers grew up on Briarcliff Rd long after the Briarcliff Club ceased to exist but remembered the stories about the club told by his parents and neighbors.
Originally published in the Greece Post Nov 8, 2007
A Roadhouse (United States, Australia) or stopping house (Canada) according to a recent dictionary is Roadhouse: a tavern or inn along a country road, as in the 1920s.
John Frank Maier was born and grew up along with his siblings on Hague St. in Dutch (Deutsch) town. Both his parents were immigrants from Germany. His father, Wenzel, was employed by a local brewery but also was involved in a local Rochester restaurant. During the summer season, young John F. worked for the Beatty family at the Island Cottage Hotel.
He became familiar with the western area not too far from the Island Cottage Hotel. John was just 19 years old in 1919 and eager to own some property in the area of Dewey Avenue and Latta Road. Farmlands spread out in all directions. John purchased a large plot of land at the northeast corner of Dewey and Latta Roads. Within a few months, a low white building appeared at the corner with MAIERS name above the row of front windows. John was in the hot dog and sandwich business. This business prospered just as the automobile was becoming more available.
Thanks to Henry Ford and the Dodge Brothers the price of cars gradually came down and were more reliable. The wage earner and his family could now journey to the Lake or take an afternoon trip all the way to Hilton on improved gravel or stone main roads. On the return trip, the hungry family spotted Maier’s ‘hotdogs, sandwiches, cold drinks’ sign. “Can we stop there, Pop?”, went up the cry. Stop they did and enjoyed Maier’s “eats”!
Fast forward a few years to 1923. John is recently married to Olive Hager and they are looking for a home close to the hot dog stand. It’s at that point they decide, why not build a roadhouse and live on the second floor? The main floor would be a full-service restaurant. Much to the surprise of the local farmers a full two-and-a-half-story building appeared in front of the hot dog stand, which, after a bit, became a two-car garage.
Neon signs were just becoming vogue, so up went a nice sign on the top of the building advertising Maier’s Restaurant. The second floor had several bedrooms that could be rented out to boarders. Through the years, family members in need of temporary housing were always welcomed.
Prohibition, the 18th Amendment, and the Volstead Act became law in January 1920 so there was no bar built in the restaurant. But there was a small bar in the basement where liquid refreshments could be had by select patrons, friendly politicians, and the local constabulary who might wish to wet their whistle!
A great story related to me by one of John F.’s grandchildren was about three “occasional Rum Runners”. The occasional runners were all women! John’s wife Olive, her sister, Midge, married to John’s brother, George, and a friend from Island Cottage Hotel would take an inboard motorboat, on a calm day, from Island Cottage to across the Canadian line into Canada. They loaded the boat with good Canadian liquor and scoot back to Island Cottage. The border patrol never stopped them. The three women were just out for a pleasure cruise! Women don’t smuggle booze????
The depression was full-blown by 1933, the year Prohibition was repealed. John quickly closed the basement liquid refreshment bar. Remodeling of the first floor was in order. The kitchen was enlarged and moved to a new addition on the buildings rear. The former kitchen became the new Bar with entrances from the outside and from the Dining room. A small combo group, pianist, or accordionist performed in the dining room, and those who wished danced in a modest area near the music.
Other small changes occurred as time went along. After WWII, the Bar was again given a facelift with new bar chairs, and a Juke Box was added. The main kitchen staff for many years were Jim Davis and Eddie Surridge. The wait staff changed through the years with members of the family, young and old, pitching in to help.
In fact, the Maier Restaurant was the hub of most family special occasions and every holiday. That gradually diminished after Olive’s passing in 1958 and then John’s in 1965. The family gathered for the last full-service dinner in August 1968.
The bar limped along alone for a couple more years. A petroleum company made an offer to buy the land for a gas station. It was accepted, but all the buildings would be demolished. By chance, a Mr. Wagner heard about that and mentioned his interest in buying the main building. It was agreed he would buy the building, sans the one-story kitchen, for one dollar, then move the building to another location at his expense. There was just one problem. The new location was north of the Lake Ontario State Parkway and the underpass was too low for the building to pass through. The moving company solved the problem by going up the down ramp, over and down the up ramp to its new location on Kirkwood Rd. John’s “Roadhouse” was saved and has been a single house ever since. John F. and Olive Maier would have been quite happy…
A grateful THANKS to John Maier III for sharing with the Greece Historical Society the photocopies of his grandfather’s restaurant and other family photos, as well as his help in sharing many family memories of the restaurant operation. Without John, this article could not have been written.
It is not quite a century since rural Greece slowly and sometimes not so slowly started to turn from an almost completely agricultural community to street after street of home developments. After World War II the pace quickened so fast that the DPW couldn’t keep up with all the new street names. All the early settlers and farmstead names had been used; flowers, trees, clever contractions of several names, stones, rocks, etc. came into play……Lucky, we don’t have a Main St., Broadway, or 42nd St. One of the last larger plots of land on Latta Rd at Kirk Rd has just recently gone from an abandoned apple orchard to the beginning of small attached housing for the aging “baby-boomer” population. How fast the recent past is swept away for the latest assault by man However, we still do have farms in Greece, and the pictures below depict a history of some of these familiar farm names: DeConinck, Mitchell, Preston, and Yarker farms.
Unit of Service: Company A, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division, 3rd Army
Location of Service:
Highest Rank: Staff Sergeant
Dates of Service: 1943-1946
Entrance into Service: Enlisted
Military Status: Veteran
Service History Note: The veteran served as a front-line gunner in Patton’s Third Army and was one of a small number of survivors from his original company.
John Foy grew up in Charlotte, the fifth of six sons born to Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Foy and one of ten children. He attended Holy Cross School and graduated from Charlotte High School in June 1943. He was preceded into the service by three of his brothers. He enlisted in the army’s ASTP program at the age of seventeen in August 1943 and he chose to go to Cornell University, “because it was closest to home. I’d never been away from home before. We were supposed to go there for two years and after two years get a degree in engineering and then get a commission in the Army Engineers.”
Charlotte High photo by John Cranch
“But the Army in its wisdom decided after six months to close the whole program down. They decided they needed infantrymen instead of engineers. That’s something that always bothered me. All these guys—there were some 300,000 of them all across the country–and these college guys with extremely high IQs and almost all of them got sent as infantrymen right into the front lines. I had hundreds of them drop alongside of me. I often wonder what our country would be like today if we didn’t lose all those scientists, engineers, doctors, even politicians. Who knows what our country could have been. But they all got killed. I went over with about 200 hundred men in my infantry company; I was a machine gunner in an infantry line company. Of the two hundred that left only about a dozen of us came back. The rest of them are buried over in France and Germany.”
Queen Elizabeth
After his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, Jack was assigned to Company A, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th infantry division. He went over to England on the Queen Elizabeth, “the biggest boat in service. I slept in the swimming pool, the first class swimming pool, of course; we were stacked eight high.”
“Near the end of November 1944, the army was up in the area of Metz, Nancy, France. That’s where we joined up with Patton’s Third Army. It was a very rude awakening; there were some naughty men shooting at us. It was an area the Germans had just been pushed from a few days before we got there and they knew where troops were likely to congregate and they were dropping artillery on us. We lost a lot of men even before they had a chance to fire their weapons.”
John “Jack” Foy, infantryman
Battle of the Bulge Monument at Ontario Beach Park
“It rained every day we were there. The mud got deeper and deeper. We were there until a couple of days before Christmas 1944. We got alerted that we were going to move. That was the start of the Battle of the Bulge, which was in Belgium about a hundred miles north of us. We didn’t know anything about it really. All the infantry knows about the war is what goes on a hundred feet from his foxhole. Everything else was just a big blur he didn’t know anything about.”
“In the Bulge, it was 10 degrees below zero and sometimes even colder than that. It was down below zero for two weeks. We were out in the cold and we had normal fall clothing on—we didn’t have winter clothes. You had to keep moving all the time or you’d freeze. We lost a tremendous amount of men from frozen feet and frozen hands. It was awful. It was the worst weather they’d had in Belgium in over a hundred years.”
White Christmas Written by Irving Berlin Performed by Bing Crosby Produced by Decca Labels Year: 1942
“They pulled us out; our company was the last one to leave and I was the last one of my company out. The engineers had primed a bridge with explosives and I got there and just pulled the lever down and Boom! The bridge goes up. Right next to the plunger I saw a regular army radio lying there. Usually those were locked on to a certain frequency for talk between guys in the same company. I picked it up and this one was tuned to the BBC in London. This was Christmas Eve, maybe six o’clock at night. It was completely dark there. Bing Crosby was singing White Christmas from London. Somebody had changed the frequency. It was a beautiful song right in the middle of such horror and misery.”
“I had a Jeep at that time, as a machine gunner, to carry my gun and ammunition. We headed north going through Reims. By that time it was about one o’clock in the morning. At the huge cathedral in Reims, midnight mass was just letting out and the people were streaming out of church and we were roaring down the street in front of them with the engines wide open on the way to the Bulge. It just seemed so strange that here they were celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace and we were on our way to kill. And that’s what we did.”
“We were on the west side of Bastogne. The Germans were trying to close the road off. It was our job to stop them. We ran right into the German Panzer Light air division which was one of their top divisions. We were still greenhorns more or less, but we stopped them. We pushed them back. We were there fighting them in pretty much the same location for about two weeks. We’d push them back and they’d push us back. Go back and forth. We were there from Christmas day until the middle of January. ”
“They pulled us out and sent us to Luxemburg. It was another country, but it was only about a hundred miles away. It was supposed to be a quiet section where we could kind of rest, recuperate, and build up again but it didn’t turn out that way. The Sauer River was between us and the Germans. Every night we’d go across the river in rubber boats and stir up trouble.”
The regiment was sent back into Belgium to Saint Vith to try to break through the Siegfried Line. The Germans had built a series of thirty-square feet forts. “They covered each other so you couldn’t sneak up on one without the guy next door seeing you. The idea was we’d have to put everything in to breaking into one of them and work our way down the line. It worked fairly well. I had a blow torch I picked up some place. It worked with gasoline. I used to carry it with me on a rope on my belt to heat coffee or a can of beans. I thought, ‘this ought to work on these pillboxes.’ We snuck up real close to one of them. I pumped the blow torch up with as much pressure as I could and we squirted a stream of gasoline through an air vent. It’d only hold a pint a gas and when I figured the pint was just about gone, I told the guy I was with, ‘Okay, light it.’ He sticks the match underneath the stream and it travels right up into the pillbox. I thought there would be a big explosion, but there wasn’t. There was a dull thud. But then heavy black smoke came pouring out and the Germans came pouring out, too. We took quite a few pillboxes using that.”
The U.S. Army finally broke through the Siegfried Line and in early March they were in the Rhineland. “It was picture postcard country with a castle on top of the hill and a moat. Sometimes we’d attack a castle of all things. It was like we were the knights of old charging across the drawbridge to an old castle. We captured four or five castles like that.”
“We came to a little town, Rhens-on-the-Rhine; it was built by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago. That was where we crossed the Rhine River and it was pure horror. The darn Germans had 20mm anti-aircraft guns right on the bank of the river. They knew we were coming sooner or later. I was supposed to be in the second assault wave. The first company went across with just paddles in these small boats and the idea was to get to the other side without being discovered. Some German shot up a flare when they were about halfway across and they opened fire and had quite a battle going.”
Maus Castle
“They had an engineering company that was with us. We had more boats than we had engineers to run them. A call went out: ‘Anybody know how to run these damn boats?’ Well, I had fooled with boats down here on the [Genesee] River since I was five years old. So I was pretty good handling boats. They had these big engines, 32HP Johnson engines, on the back of these small barges. So I just ran down and jumped in one of boats there, pulled the cord, started the engine up; ‘Okay, jump in!’ It would hold only about twelve to sixteen guys. They jumped in and across the river we’d go. I ended up running the darn boat for half the night. I got sunk once or twice, I’m not sure; well at least once I got sunk. The shell hit the boat and blew the bow off it and it went down. But I was able to climb back in. I was more valuable running the boats than I was fighting on the shores, so I went back, got on another boat that wasn’t being used.”
“Things started opening up a little bit. The weather was getting better so our Air Force could get in and strafe the German army. We were moving kind of fast and we’d come up to all these little villages. The German army had almost disappeared. In front of these towns they’d leave a bunch of old men, who were usually soldiers from the First World War, and young kids, which were fourteen or fifteen years old. The Hitler youth. As soon as we came around the corner, the old guys would give up right away. But the young kids, all they knew was this Hitler garbage, stuff they had been fed since they were babies. And they wanted to fight. And they did fight. Quite frankly, they were good fighters because they were in well entrenched positions and their firing was just as deadly as an experienced soldier. At first you felt funny; you felt like you were shooting your kid brother, but after a couple of our guys got shot by them, we stopped showing mercy and we took them out, which we had to do.”
“In April, we discovered our first concentration camp, one called Ohrdruf. I find it hard to describe. You could smell it coming down the road. ‘What the hell is that?’ We got up to a fence and there were all these people wearing—striped pajamas, I guess, is the best way to describe it—and they were just skin and bones. It really awakened us to the Germans. Right away we called back to our regimental headquarters and the Colonel, the regimental commander, came up and he saw it and he called back and before the day is done, General Patton himself was there and he saw it. The next day Eisenhower was there and I think Churchill from England came to see. He couldn’t believe it. I saw General Patton walk behind a shed and just puke his guts out, it just made him so sick. There’s a tough old geezer, but he did. We started moving again and twenty miles down the road we ran into Buchenwald Concentration Camp.”
John’s unit moved into Czechoslovakia at the beginning of May 1945. “We were collecting thousands and thousands of Germans every day. They came in to surrender; of course they wanted to surrender to us rather than the Russians. They knew what the Russians would do to them because they had done the same thing to the Russians when they took over their country. We went out on a patrol—there were 20 of us, I think, in the patrol. We went into a little town that was filled with Germans and we just drove a Jeep and a couple of trucks right on down to this big building that was the headquarters, evidently. We went in and there was a German general, a lieutenant general, the equivalent rank of General Patton. He surrendered to us. Here there are 20 of us and he surrendered about 50,000 people to us.”
John’s company was still in Czechoslovakia when the war ended on May 8. After a few weeks the company was assigned to go to Japan. They returned to the United States on the Navy ship, the West Point. His battalion had received a Presidential Unit Citation for their crossing of the Rhine River: “Our general was pretty proud of us. So he kicked all the officers out of the state rooms on the top deck of the ship and gave us the state rooms which were pretty nice coming back. We came back to New York and we were one of the first fighting divisions to come back. They had a big celebration in New York. They had big fireboats in the harbor when we came in. We all got 30 days leave to go home and recuperate for a little while and we’d have to report back at the end of thirty days to get ready to go to Japan. We weren’t too happy about that.”
“While we were home, that’s when they dropped the atom bombs. If they didn’t drop those bombs we would have easily lost a million men in the landings in Japan. I hate to think what would have happened. I know I wouldn’t be here. Because after the war they came out with the plans that they had already drawn up for the invasion, and our division was due to land halfway between Tokyo and Yokohama, right in Tokyo Bay. They expected 50% casualties in the landing party. That was just the landing party. I never would have made it.”
“My company went over to Germany with about 200 hundred men. When we came back there were 12 or 15 of the original company still left. They weren’t all killed—about 80 of the 200 were killed and the rest were badly wounded. I got hit three times, but not seriously; it was just grazing to my arm, my side and my leg. I got back to the aid station and the doctor sprinkled some sulfa powder on it, bandaged it up, and said ‘get your butt back up there.’”
“All the guys I had been close with had gotten killed and strangely enough you didn’t want to get to know the replacements. Say Joe Dokes next to you got killed and they sent up another guy, Pete Brown, to take his place. You didn’t really want to get to know Pete Brown because you knew chances are within three or four days he was going to be dead. When you’re in the line for a while, you knew how to stay alive, how to keep going, how to take advantage of the least bit of cover, and what to do when you heard the sounds of the shells coming. You knew what to do. These young kids didn’t know and they’d get killed. There was a sort of core of us of maybe 20 men in the company that had been there from the start; at the end there was only maybe a dozen left. But we kind of hung together and we were the ones that stayed alive.”
“People would ask me, ‘how did it feel when a guy you had served with for a year or so when he got killed right alongside of you?’ Your first feeling would be that you’re sorry Joe got killed; very selfishly you second feeling was ‘boy, am I glad it wasn’t me.’ You became very callused to death. I actually piled dead German soldiers up around my foxhole. I didn’t have any sandbags or anything and the ground was like a rock to try to dig, it was frozen solid. So we piled dead German soldiers up around us for protection. Sounds like a horrible thing to do, but we did. I look back now and wonder ‘How the hell could I have ever done such a thing? You did a lot of things you never thought you could. Conditions were so different then. You did what you had to do. I hate to think of it. I killed men. It’s hard to think of sometimes, but that’s the way it was. If we didn’t kill them, they would kill us.”
After a stint in the Navy during the Korean War, John returned to Charlotte where he had his own plumbing contract business. He and his wife raised four children. Today is lives right on the Greece-Charlotte border.
Other photos that are connected with John aka “Jack” Foy
John “Jack” D FoyReims Cathedral Light Show 2011-12Cambridge American Cemetery2012 German Castle Trip Rhine boat tour Maus Castle2012 German Castle Trip Rhine boat tour Maus CastleWestwallJack Foy With General Pattons GranddaugterBurg Lahneck
By far the largest and the most elegant of all the late 19th and early 20th century hotels along Lake Ontario in Greece was the Odenbach Manitou Beach Hotel. It was located at the far western end of the Manitou Beach Trolley. Built in 1888 by the Matthew and Servis Co. of State Street in Rochester, a wholesale and retail liquor and tobacco dealer, it was named for the resort of Manitou Springs, Colorado.
By the mid-1890s it had been taken over by Frederick Odenbach, who already had a modest restaurant on State Street. The Hotel had 25 guest rooms, a well-appointed lobby, a men’s bar, and a ladies’ salon, plus a restaurant.
Frederick S. Odenbach 1853-1919, Courtesy of Marie Poinan
The building was lit by acetylene gas lamps from the gas plant on the property. The frontage on the lake was almost 800 feet with an expanse of sandy beach. The Manitou Trolley began frequent daily, seasonal service in 1891.
Along with the trolley, the steamer Rosalie (owned by the Odenbach family) ran from about 1912 through 1916. It docked at a pier that was about 800 feet in length, built of cement piers and steel decking. A round-trip ticket from Charlotte was 25 cents.
Fred Odenbach and Matthew John Fred and Charley
After Fred Odenbach’s death in 1919, the hotel passed to his four sons, Fred J., John H., Matthew P., and Charles P. Odenbach. Matthew took over running the hotel from then on, making many improvements through the years. A major renovation was the enlargement and enclosure of the front porch. The spacious room could easily seat 500 patrons and included a raised bandstand and a dance floor.
Cover of The Manitou Beach Hotel Menu
Main Dining Room at Manitou Beach Hotel
From then on, the hotel became famous for its marvelous food, wonderful dance music, and panoramic view of Lake Ontario. Nationally known orchestras of the day such as Vincent Lopez and Tommy Tucker played engagements there, as well as favorite local bands such as Sax Smith and Damon’s Orchestra.
By 1925 the trolley had bowed out to the ever-increasing automobile traffic and the improvement of Manitou Rd. to a two-lane paved road. World War Il had begun in 1939 and the United States went to war at the end of 1941. Curtailment of unnecessary travel by car and gasoline rationing brought an end to the 55-year run of the grandest hotel between Charlotte and Olcott Beach to the west.
In the Map to the left, you can see the location where Elmheart and Manitou Beach Hotels are located on this SubPlan No2. Manitou Beach from the 1932 City of Rochester Plate Map Number 41.
Matthew Odenbach
It closed in 1943, never to reopen. A headline in the Rochester Times Union on May 19, 1955 states: “Famed Lakeside Dining Spot, Hotel Manitou, Coming Down.” Matt Odenbach (manager since 1919) was quoted as saying the work had started several weeks before and would be completed by July 4.
The furnishings had been sold and the lumber recycled. The property was still owned by Matt and his three brothers. The land was split into building lots shortly after. Nothing remains as a reminder of the wonderful times that untold thousands of people enjoyed there…..only the expansive view of the lake remains and a faint musical refrain from long ago, whispered by a few remaining poplar trees along Manitou Road.
After turning the corner at Latta Road to go south on North Greece Road, one might quickly pass a plain red brick building at the rear of a small parking lot. Across the right front of the building are the letters, United States Post Office. If you aren’t from the area you might not know you are in the hamlet of North Greece. This area was one of the earlier settlements in Greece. It has had a Post Office since 1850 (from the government records, a few say earlier).
Over the last 163-year period the mail operation has occupied at least six known locations, never more than a block away from each other. The first location was a small space in the store of Alfred Phelps at the Southwest corner of Latta and North Greece Roads.
Phelps general store latta and north Greece roads sketch William Aeberli 1970
For a short period of time in the early 1870s the location moved across North Greece Road to a store operated by William T. Filer. By 1880 it was back again, operating out of the Phelps store by Alfred’s son Henry. For the next sixty-five years, it was to share space with the ever-expanding general merchandise. Changing times in the early 1900s saw the gradual demise of the pickle and cracker barrels. Molasses was no longer dispensed into a jug. Kerosene found fewer uses as Greece gradually saw the extension of electrical service to North Greece and beyond.
Nineteen forty-five saw the end of World War II and the Post Office found it necessary to relocate again as building material were in short supply then. A small building was found on a nearby farm and moved on a flatbed truck to the rear of the original North Greece Fire Station on the Northeast corner of Latta Road at North Greece Road. Remember by older local residents was Mrs. Melinda Germeroth (Right), the postmistress from the opening of the small office in August 1945 to her retirement in December 1967.
A major remodel and addition to the fire station made room for the post office to lease a much larger space from the fire department in 1964.
As a second-class contract post office, it could offer all the amenities of a first-class post office. Mail delivery was not offered in this post office, except to the rented post office boxes on the premises. It also was not necessary for the U.S. Post Office Service to own the building.
Another twelve years and the fire station was bursting at the seams. However, no remodeling was done this time. The entire old building was demolished and a new fire station was erected. There was no small, used building for the post office this time. It was decided to move the post office into a temporary, cramped 12′ By 50′ trailer until a new permanent building was built. The trailer was put on rented property down North Greece Road, barely a block south of the fire station. The postal service put out a call for bids on a building that would have 1,056 sq. ft. of space. George and Florence Germeroth Jr. were the successful bidders and the Post Office would lease the building from the Germeroths. Florence had taken the place of her mother-in-law (Melinda) on her retirement in 1967.
The present facility is a one-person operation, except during busy seasonal and special times. Numerous postal clerks served there and at the other earlier locations. A more recent clerk with many years of service was Doris Cutter, who is fondly remembered. Doris retired in early 2004 with many years of faithful service. Another is Ann Piazza who worked with Mrs. Cutter for many years.
Though only a mile and a half west of the main Greece Post Office, it is a much slower-paced opera tion. It closes for an hour at lunchtime; the outer lobby has a bank of private mailboxes with a special Zip Code of 14515 for those only.
If you are still writing by “snail-mail” or sending cards, a North Greece cancellation mark is available by dropping your correspondence in a special slot. North Greece is the only location that has a Greece cancellation. A visit there recently found I was in a friendly, unrushed flow of patrons in what seemed to be a flashback to another time. With the postal service running up red ink more every year, will North
Greece eventually cease to have its own post office…?
Photos, data supplied by Alan Mueller, Greece Historian’s Office. If you have any information on our photos, call Alan at 663-1706.
Veterans Day and Memorial Day are special days for Americans. especially for our veterans. On these special days all across America, we gather ’round our war memorials to pay tribute to our men and women who have served and to those who have given their lives for their country.
War memorials can be nothing more than a small plaque on the wall of a town hall, a special area in the local cemetery, or in many cases a large relic from a past conflict. Many towns have a cannon or a statue in the middle of the town square, or a captured field gun like the town of Greece once in front of the old Town Hall on Ridge Road.
It was in August 1931 when a Greece Legionnaires committee, headed by Police Chief Milton H. Carter, acquired a 105 mm German Howitzer. The field gun had been captured from the Germans during the World War and was obtained from the government with the cooperation of Congressman James Whitley.
After some cleaning and polishing, it was placed on a concrete base in front of Town Hall. For a decade, the field gun was the centerpiece of the town’s Memorial Day ceremonies. However, the last time a ceremony was conducted at the field gun during peace time, was on Memorial Day 1941, when Supervisor Gordon Howe placed a wreath on the cannon, followed by a parade to Falls Cemetery, where the Rev. Alfred Wangman, pastor of Dewey Avenue Presbyterian Church, prayed “not for victory but for peace.”
Gordon Howe, Town Supervisor, lays a wreath on Memorial Day at the Town Hall, 1941, from the Office of the Town HistorianThe flag of stars flew at Greece Town Hall to call attention to the number of Greece Men and Women in service during World War II. Additional stars were added as the numbers grew. From Left to Right Town Supervisor Gordon Howe, Police Chief Milton Carter, and Lucius Bagley World War I Veteran
M60 tank sits outside at American Legion Post 468 on Dorsey Road
Within a year we were totally involved in World War II. Everyone on the home front was doing their patriotic duty by participating in their local salvage campaign. Here in Greece, residents were collecting old newspapers, tin cans, rubber, you name it, when it was realized that that one field gun was worth more than a 1,000 tin cans.
Soon a decision was made by the members of the American Legion Post, headed by Commander Cyrille Ver Weire, and town officials that the cannon would be dismantled and the metal turned over for the salvage campaign “to help keep Uncle Sam’s war industries humming.”
On Sunday, Nov. 14, 1942, 66 years ago, a delegation including Carter went to Town Hall for the last look at the war relic before its dismantling. In some respects, it must have been a sad occasion to lose their prized field gun, but the Legionnaires were informed that in return for their contribution of the gun to the salvage effort they would receive another war relic at the close of the war.
That war relic was a long time coming. It wasn’t until June 1999 that the post received an American M-60 tank, which is now on display in front of their building on Dorsey Road.
We can wonder if those Legionnaires in 1931 ever realized that their obsolete captured German field gun would someday be used to help with win another war against the Germans.
Let’s hope that we are never again in a situation that we have to salvage parts from an obsolete war relic.
Originally published in the Greece Post on November 13, 2008
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