We first heard the term “greatest generation” in the late 1990s with the publication of Tom Brokaw’s book of the same name. At that time the subjects of that book were in their late seventies. Twenty-plus years later their ranks are thinning rapidly. The deaths this summer of two of the members of that generation call to mind the day they met in Lima, Ohio on April 15, 2011.
Frances Metzger Fredericks was the younger sister of William E. Metzger Jr. who received the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary valor in Germany in November 1944. She had grown up in Lima and graduated from Lima Central High School. She was working in a jewelry store in downtown Lima a few weeks before Thanksgiving in 1944 when the Western Union office delivered to her a telegram to take home to her parents on Baxter Street.
It was the telegram all families dreaded during the War. Her brother, the co-pilot of a B-17, was one of four crewmen who were killed when his plane exploded and crashed. There were five other crewmen who had bailed out on the pilot’s order. They all witnessed 2nd Lt. Metzger give his parachute to a crewman while refusing to bail out in order to help the pilot land the stricken aircraft. Several months later, shortly before the end of the War, Frances and her parents received a package from the War Department containing the ID bracelet she and her sister had bought for their brother before he left for Europe in September 1944. It had been recovered at the crash site.
On the weekend of April 15-16, 2011 Frances was returning to her hometown to deliver her brother’s Medal of Honor and the ID bracelet to the Allen County Historical Society for the newly created Medal of Honor exhibit at the Allen County Museum. Then and there is when she met Hershel Woodrow Williams of Huntington, West Virginia.
Woody arrived in Lima, for the first time, as an invited guest to help dedicate the new Medal of Honor exhibit which included, along with the Metzger Medal of Honor, the Medal of Honor awarded to the family of Leonard F. Mason who had been killed in action after eliminating a machine gun nest blocking the path of his unit on Guam in July 1944. Woody, like Leonard, had been a Marine infantryman in the 3rd Marine Division on Guam the day Leonard was killed. They didn’t know each other as they were assigned to different regiments but they soon shared something in common.
On Feb. 19, 1945, Woody, still with the 3rd Marine Division, landed on Iwo Jima. On the fourth day of that battle, Woody was tasked with eliminating entrenched Japanese defenders with flamethrowers. He was successful in eliminating seven such positions. In October 1945, Woody was decorated with the Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman in Washington D.C. The Metzger family received their son and brother’s Medal from the Deputy Commander of the 8th Air Force in a ceremony at Market Street Presbyterian Church in Lima in June 1945.
Between 1945 and 2011 Frances and Woody, along with others of their generation contributed much to the greatest boom in the standard of living the world had ever seen. When they met in Lima in 2011 they were there to remember two of their generation who had seen to it that such a miracle could be accomplished once the world was freed from tyranny. When they met in April 2011 they were both 87 years young having both been born in October 1923. Pictures of the two of them at the weekend’s festivities showed two people who had given much and still had much to give.
In the years that followed they found that others had much to give to them. In 2019 Frances was able to see the re-dedication of the Metzger Lake reservoir in Lima by a local Eagle Scout. The new monument replaces the original one built in 1954. Woody has been lauded regularly not only for his heroics but for his work with the Veterans Administration and the Gold Star Mothers. The USS Hershel Williams (ESB 4) was placed in service by the U.S. Navy in 2020.
Woody died on June 28, 2022. His death was the last of the living recipients of the Medal of Honor from World War II. For this reason, the casket containing his remains was laid in state at the Capitol rotunda in Washington before he was interred back home in Quiet Dell, West Virginia. Frances died on Aug. 9, 2022 at her home in Fredericksburg Virginia, her husband Cecil, also a veteran of World War II, having predeceased her six years earlier. Their four daughters will have her ashes interred with their father in Woodlawn Cemetery in Lima.
They have joined the diminishing ranks of the greatest of their generation, but for one memorable weekend, they met in Lima and gave a testament to those in attendance of what it takes to keep a country great. Many of those in attendance were under 30 years of age and have likely begun to make their mark as the greatest of their generation.
Lawrence A. Huffman is an attorney in Lima. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.
