ALLISON WAYNE STRAUSS

APR 1942

Allison Wayne Strauss d. 27 April 1942 SW Pacific WWII

(clipping dated 02 Mar 1948)

County’s First Gold Star Comes Home

Wadesville, Ind., Mar. 2 - The body of the first Posey county Gold Star of World War II, Capt. Allison Wayne Strauss, 26, will reach his native Wadesville Saturday. The funeral service, including religious and patriotic rites, will be held Sunday afternoon at 2:00 o’clock in the Wadesville General Baptist church and in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

William Strauss, father of the first Posey county World War II Gold Star, was officially advised Tuesday that the body of the Posey hero, accompanied by a military escort, will reach Poseyville Saturday. From the Werry Funeral Home in Poseyville it will be taken to the Strauss home at Wadesville where it will remain until the funeral at the church.

Rev. Charles E. Zapp, Evansville Presbyterian minister and a fellow student of Capt. Strauss in Indiana University, will conduct the religious service. American Legionnaires will officiate at the grave.

Surviving Capt. Strauss, in addition to his father and mother, are a brother, Kenneth, at home, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Air Force with long service in the European theatre during World War II, and a sister, Mrs. Ross Dodd, Marysville, Ohio.

Capt. Strauss, a pursuit pilot in the US Army Air Force in the Southwest Pacific, was shot down in combat with the Japs on April 27, 1942. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart for gallantry in action.

A native of Youngstown, Ohio, the first Posey Gold Star, came to Wadesville with his family in 1931. He was graduated from Indiana University in 1939 and shortly afterward enlisted in the Air Corps. He received his flight training at Randolph and Kelly Fields. He was commissioned in March 1940 and sent to the Philippines that fall and was stationed there a year prior to the outbreak of the war. Shortly after Pearl Harbor he was sent to Australia and received his commission as a captain while there.

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Originally submitted by Betty Sellers