WILLOW CREEK — Sixty men from Willow Creek registered for the Selective Service draft at the Town Hall last Saturday, becoming the first cohort of local men to be included in the nation’s first peacetime conscription since the Civil War.
The registrants, all men between the ages of 21 and 35, formed a line that stretched from the Town Hall door down School Street to the corner of Main. The registration took four hours to complete, with each man filling out a detailed questionnaire covering his occupation, dependents, physical condition, and previous military experience.
The Gazette is publishing the names of all 60 registrants on page one of this edition — a practice the paper intends to continue for the duration of the draft, so that the community may know who has answered the call to service.
Among the names on the list is Walter Thorne, age 42 — the son of Ezra Thorne II and the father of a child due in the summer. At 42, Thorne is near the upper limit of the draft age and is unlikely to be called in the first round, but his registration is nevertheless significant. The Thorne family has sent men to every American war since the Revolution.
“I registered because it is my duty,” Walter Thorne told the Gazette. “My father served in the Spanish-American War. My grandfather served in the Civil War. The Thornes do not hide from service. If the country needs me, I will go.”
Ezra Homan, now 35, also registered. He has two children and works as a foreman at the mill. He told the Gazette that he hopes the draft will not take him, but that he will go if called.
“I have a wife and two young ones,” Homan said. “If I am called, they will be taken care of — the town looks after its own. But I hope that my work at the mill, which is essential to the war effort, will keep me here.”
The draft numbers will be drawn in Washington in the coming weeks. The first men called are expected to report for induction in March. The Gazette will keep the community informed as the selections are announced.
Arthur Whitcomb editorializes: “We are a small town sending our sons to a large world. We do not know what that world holds for them. But we know that they go with the prayers of their neighbors, and that is not nothing.”