| Notes |
- According to Edna Marie Proteroe in a telephone call with Lucas Joseph Walter, Jr. on 25 May 2009:
Following the funeral of Lucas Joseph Walter, Sr. in November 1955, the family got together at the home of Frank Gerald Walter and Edna Marie Protheroe. After a while, Frank was gone and they found him sitting alone at the gravesite of Lucas Jospeh Walter, Sr. The two of them were very close.
According to Elmer Walter in a telephone call with Lucas Joseph Walter, Jr. on 18 June 2009:
Frank Gerald Walter, Sr. served in Europe during World War II and was captured in Germany. According to Elmer, some kids approached him and his squad and said their mother was hurt. When Frank and the squad went to help, a machine gun nest opened up on them, captured them, and tortured them on the rack to extract information. Frank was left for dead on the rack, and was the only member of his squad to survive and was awarded the Purple Heart.
After the war and back in Pennsylvania, Frank had several post-traumatic stress breakdowns. His brother Lucas, who was in World War II serving in the Pacific Theater, also had a post-traumatic stress attack and was taken by the Veteran's Administration to the VA hospital for treatment.
The similarity of their wartime experiences and post-traumatic stress disorders after the war probably accounted for the fact that, as Edna Marie Protheroe said in the notes above, "The two of them were very close".
In a phone call on 30 Jun 2009 between Edna Marie Protheroe and Lucas Joseph Walter, Jr:
Her husband Frank had a "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" episode when he snapped when he saw a local policeman in uniform that made him think of Germans. Frank had been complaining about a headache and one day he tripped over some kids' toys and fell down the cellar stairs. Got knocked out and when he woke up he just went berserk. Put his arm through the cellar door window and cut his arm all the way up. He was running up the steps and she said she was "holding him back by the belt 'cause I didn't know where he was going to go or what he was going to do". Her neighbor from across the street happened to be coming over and she shut Marie's front door and stood by it so Frank couldn't get out. The girl next door was visiting with her boyfriend and he got Frank on the floor and she put a tourniquet on his arm. Marie called Frank's dad and he came over, but Frank had run over the hill and a fireman got a hold of him and put him in the ambulance. One guy was gonna punch him, but his dad said "Don't hit him, he doesn't know what he's doing. Don't you dare hit him, you'll kill him." They had to strap him down in the ambulance and they wouldn't let Marie go with him--they said it was not safe. They took him to St. Francis Hospital, run by the nuns. Every time that cop came near him, Frank went after him--it's a good thing he was strapped down or he would have killed him. He thought the cop was one of the Germans; Frank said to the cop "I told Marie I was coming home and I'm going home." Marie said she went up to talk to him and "he called me a whore". The hospital gave him a couple of shots to try to calm Frank down, but they said it would be like giving him aspirin. He didn't know where he was or nothing. A doctor was sewing up his arm and suddenly he came to and looked around. He saw Marie there and asked her what's going on? Marie said she asked him "do you know where you are?" and he said "no, the hospital?" The doctor talked to him and told him you're OK now. The doctor then asked him if he wanted a cigarette, and gave him one while he sewed up his arm. Frank stayed in the hospital for about a week; they called it a nervous breakdown. Marie said they had to go back and forth several times afterwards to see the "nerve doctor".
Frank didn't say much about the war. He did say that one time they beat him up real bad in Germany and left him for dead. Frank did talk about staying with a family in Holland when he was on leave from the Army--and had even asked Marie to send soap and other items to give to them since the family couldn't get these types of things.
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From Edna Marie Protheroe in a phone call with Lucas Joseph Walter, Jr. on 26 Mar 2011: Frank Gerald Walter's draft status is an interesting story. When he was due to be inducted, he was working at a factory making chains and his company successfully convinced the draft board that he was needed at the company because his work was critical to the war effort. There seems to have been an ongoing battle between the draft board and the company, but he was able to get two or three of these deferments before the need for soldiers got so critical that he was finally forced to enter the Army, and at the worst possible time for him--a few days before his first anniversary and just a month before his first son was born.
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1919 - 1987 (68 years)