Veteran remembers WWII, his first vote

Born on June 7, 1916, Homer Davis is one of the oldest Lincoln County residents to vote, but the first time he voted was in a completely different era.

As a World War II veteran, the first time Davis voted was 1944 in France. He voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Davis, 100, was born on a small farm and ranch in North Carolina during the middle of the first World War in Europe, the year Woodrow Wilson won re-election and the same year Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and Betty Grable were born.

He was 14 when the stock market crashed in 1929, signaling the start of the Great Depression, and one of the harshest drought periods in U.S. history.

“If you had a dollar, you were rich,” Davis recalled of those days. “Nobody made any money, it didn’t matter what you did.”

From then on, Davis enlisted in the Army and served in the Military Police under General George S. Patton. His job was to keep the roads open for Patton’s army. He served in two campaigns, in Central Europe and in the Rhineland in Western Germany.

Davis said that the was 30 miles from Berlin when he heard the news that Hitler was dead.

Although the war in Germany had ended, Davis, along with many soldiers, were almost sent to Japan to help in the Pacific side of the war.

In a plane over Russia, Davis heard the news that the U.S. had dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing a final end to World War II.

Soon after the war ended, Davis would marry a woman named Del, with whom he had corresponded with during the war.

In 1955, he moved to Troy, where he and Del lived with their two children.

Currently, Davis is the county’s third oldest registered voter.

On his 100th birthday, family from all over the U.S. and many locals threw him a party at the Halfway House Bar & Grill in Troy.

Bethany Rolfson can be reached at 293-4124 or by email at reporter@thewesternnews.com.