Valentine John Yanta

This is one of those little projects I have thought about since I started doing genealogy work for the Valentine & Albertina Yanta descendants. I had an uncle that gave his life 60 years ago in the Korean war defending his and our country. Many of his nephews and nieces were born after he was killed in Korea and, as such, never really knew much about him except through stories and/or comments made by family members. So this is a recounting of personal memories that I have and some personal memories of others. I met and talked with Victor (Sonny) Yanta, Laurence Yanta, Vivian Hudson, Vincent Brysch and Bishop John Yanta, Valeria Ebeier, Ladik Zezula, Lucy Sekula Dorff and others and they shared their memories with me and I have tried to put their thoughts to paper. I am sure that there are many other things that we have probably forgotten.

Valentine, also called Val and/or Valik was the youngest of 5 children born on February 8, 1931 to William Frank and Agnes Kowalik Yanta. My earliest memories of him are walking with him to the school bus stop by our front gate. This was the case when he started going to Runge school. Prior to going to Runge, he attended Brieger school which was a country school off of what is now FM627. Brieger school closed in 1945 and all of the kids on the North side of Runge started attending Runge. Val would have been in the 8th grade. Brieger school did not have a bus system so everyone was responsible for getting to school on their own. Vincent Brysch rode a horse while Valeria Ebeier and her siblings (John & Mary Yanta's children) rode a horse and buggy that their father fixed up. It is thought that Val rode a bicycle but not really sure but it was thought that he rode a horse also. For Val it was 2 ½ miles from his house to Brieger School. Once I started school in the fall of 1945, Val was going to Runge also. Since he lived a mile down the road past our house, he would have already walked a mile before getting to our house. It was another mile to get to the bus stop. Mom and Dad always drove us to the bus stop in the mornings because they wanted to make sure we got there on time and not miss the bus. We almost always walked home in the evenings though. For Val, that was 1 mile in the morning and 2 miles in the evening. He was already a sophmore in high school when I started school (the first grade since we didn't have kindergarden). I cannot remember if he walked everyday or if he walked to some other location. He could have walked to where Valeria, Edwin, and their siblings caught the bus (which would have been about a ½ mile or if he walked towards CR302 which would also have been closer.

I always remembered that he carried his books in a book sack that grandma made for him. The bag had a shoulder strap so it made carrying the books easier. The one episode I will always remember was he made a canoe or small boat out of some roofing tin. He was trying it out in the large water trough in back of their house. He made a small propeller and mounted it on old butter churn that he found someplace. He was paddling around in the trough and asked me if I wanted to ride in it. It didn't look very stable so I didn't. No sooner had he asked me when flipped it over and he got totally drenched. I was a pretty funny scene. I know he liked to go fishing down at the creek and so we went a couple of times. Don't remember catching anything significant. Another event I remember was the night of the senior play. He graduated in 1948 and I was in the 3rd grade. It was a tradition that the senior class at Runge always put on a play. It was springtime and as luck would have it, it rained and thundered all evening. By the time we got back home it was really pouring and the gate had to be opened. I got out to open the gate and mom said to take off my dress pants so I wouldn't get them muddy. But I said what if someone saw me in my undies. She said - at 10 PM out in the boonies – small chance someone would see me. So I am out there in undies opening gates opening gates in a driving rain. Val had driven himself to the play and was coming home after us. The road was so bad that after we got home, dad was going to get the tractor and follow him to his house in case he got stuck. Things went well and Val made it home without any trouble.

The story went around that Val wanted to study to become a priest like his cousin John (Bishop John Yanta) who lived a short distance away. Evidently, Grandpa was very upset about those ideas and did not want Val to become a priest but, instead, wanted him to stay on the farm, get married and have a family.

One of the things that I remember about him was that he love to play the accordion. He had an old style instrument that just had buttons for the keyboards. When he graduated from high school (as best as I can remember) he bought a new accordion which had a piano type keyboard for the treble (right hand side). He played everything “by ear” as he could not read music. I remember asking him about that. He said he had gotten a music manual with the accordion but since he could not read music he threw the manual away. I found it amazing how someone could play an instrument like that (both trebel and bass) with out knowing any music and play both parts by ear. What a gift! Whenever there was a gathering at Grandma and Grandpa, Val would get the accordion out and serenade us. After he was killed, Grandpa gave the accordion to me since I played a trumpet in the band but I didn't really have the talent to play the accordion and at some point after I graduated from high school I gave it to someone else but cannot remember who.

Do not remember too much in the period until he went into the Army. Vincent Brysch was able to fill me in with a few stories when he and Val were teen-agers. They did a lot hunting together and with a bunch of neighborhood boys their ages also. The community was a mix of whites, blacks and Mexicans. A lot of times on Sundays they would walk around the community. On regular occasions Val, Vincent, a couple of Garza brothers and a Perryman son would end up at Horace Smith's house. The Smiths were black and did not have any children. When Mrs. Smith would see the boys coming, she would make bisquits and gravy for them. Since they did not have children of their own, she was glad to see the youngsters at their house. Horace had a couple of greyhounds. They would go out with the dogs and run down jack rabbits. The dogs would catch the rabbits, the boys would take the rabbits, skin and clean them. They would boil them in water until the meat was tender, pick the meat off the bones and then make jack rabbit chili. The boys would often visit with Charles Smith. Everybody called him “Uncle Charlie”. He was black and also a fairly well-to-do landowner. Vincent said that Uncle Charlie owned over a 1000 acres. I remember Aunt Annie saying how Uncle Charlie would come to Grandpa and Grandma's to visit. He rode over by horse.

When Val and his buddies became teenagers and started to venture out, Val evidently had an old Model A coupe. It didn't have a roof so it was almost like a convertible. This car didn't have regular brakes so he had to use an hand brake to stop. Val, Vincent and their buddies would pile in and go to Gillette where there were a three “beer joints” to get a beer. Evidently there was only one that would sell beer to the boys. The other two would kick them out. There was a sizeable black population in Gillette. They had their own rodeo arena and on June 19 (“Juneteenth”) they always had a rodeo where the community came to celebrate.

Val visited often with his John and Mary Yanta's children (Val's cousins who lived about a half mile away). See photo of boys swimming in the water trough.

Vincent and Val would attend dances at the various communities like Nordheim, Garfield, Cotton Patch, Panna Maria and Cestohowa. Sometimes they would meet there and other times they would drive together.

He was drafted and the irony is that he left for San Antonio on February 14,1952 (Valentine Day). From San Antonio he shipped out to California for training. Adrian was born 3 days later on February 17. Val came back home on leave in June before shipping out to Korea. I had gotten polio in early June (I had just finished the 7th grade) and after spending some weeks in the hospital I was recuperating at home. He came by and visited while I was confined to bed. He served with the Third Infantry Division and shipped out after a short leave. It was in September when a telegram came and said that he had been killed in action on September 26, 1952. Don't remember the details of the telegram delivery but within a few days two Army officers came by the house on their way to grandpa and grandma's house. Dad and mom went with the officers. In the meantime I received a letter that he has written 7 days before he was killed. They had been fighting at the frontlines and had pulled back to rest when he wrote the letter to me. I still have that letter. It took about 8 weeks before Val's body was shipped back for burial at St Anthony's church and cemetery (See photo of telegram). His body arrived at Cambellton, Texas on Sunday, November 23. His body was picked up by Rhodes Funeral Home of Karnes City, and brought to the Rhodes Chapel in Runge on Sunday Afternoon. A rosary was held Sunday evening with services held on Monday morning, November 24 at St. Anthony's Catholic Church. Pall bearers were Edwin Yanta, Alex Trial, Gussie Yanta, Sixtus Mika, Conrad Janysek and Vincent Brysch.

There is an event that I remember about his funeral and another event that happen some months afterwards. The first event at the funeral: I was an alter-boy at Val's funeral. I remember a young woman there at the funeral who was crying. Didn't know who she was and I remember Mom and Dad saying that she was Val's girlfriend who lived in the Valley. Don't remember if they told me her name but if they did, I had forgotten it. I have always wondered who it was. In scanning old pictures for the Yanta reunion in 2010, Aunt Annie Yanta Dziuk (Val's sister) had a couple pictures of Val with a young woman who appeared to be very special to him. The pictures had December 1951 and January 1952 dates on the backs. These would have been taken shortly before he went into the Army. Some of the pictures also have another couple in them. Aunt Annie always wrote people's name on the back of the pictures. However, these pictures with Val and Miss XXX, Aunt Annie had only written Valentine and xxxx Sekula and no names for the other couple. I called Vivian and asked if she might know who the person was. She said she didn't. I had mentioned this to Adrian and Cynthia. By chance, a couple of weeks later, they went to the Valley for Cynthia's godfather's funeral. They talked to some people there and the person they talked to thought that Miss Sekula had married and her last name was Kowalik and lived in Victoria. I went into the phone book and found a Mrs. Fred Kowalik. I called her and told her who I was and what I was doing. Her husband had died several years ago. Her name was Vicky and she said that the person in photo was probably her sister Lucy and lived in McAllen. I took a couple of pictures to her house and confirmed that Lucy was indeed the person in the pictures. Vicky gave me Lucy's phone number and I called her. Lucy had married and her last name now was Dorff. Her husband had also passed away. She and I had a nice, long conversation. She said it was quite a concidence that I called since she had been cleaning out old papers. She had recently thrown out old letters she had received from Val while he was in Korea. She still had some of the old photos that were from the same roll of film that Aunt Annie had. She sent them to me and they indeed were from the same rolls as the ones that Aunt Annie had. I scanned the pictures in and returned them. Lucy said that the other young woman was her sister, Alice Keller, who now lives in McCook but did not know who the other young man was. Lucy sent me a 8X10 photo of Val in his uniform which she said I could keep. During my conversation with Lucy, she said Val had given her his class ring before leaving for Korea. One can only guess that they were going to get engaged after he got back. Several years later she returned the ring to Fred Kowalik who lived in Victoria. Do not know what happened to the ring after that. After 60 years I finally solved who the mystery woman was at the funeral.

The second event: after Val's funeral in November, some months had gone by when Mom and Dad had a visit from Dan Schorre who had been one class behind Val in Runge High School and, of course, knew him well. Dan had been in the army and in Korea at the same time as Val. Dan had been a mortician and prepared bodies of the soldiers that were killed. One day he happened to look through a roster and saw Val's name and immediately recognized it. He received permission to prepare the body to be sent back home. He told Mom and Dad that Val had been hit in the back by mortar or artillery fire and killed. He took special care in preparing the body using extra embalming fluid and he had hoped that the casket would be opened for viewing. Ordinarily, the bodies are simply wrapped in blankets. Dan went and obtained a uniform and had Val dressed in his uniform. Because of military restrictions, Dan could not let Grandma and Grandpa know this. Since Grandma and Grandpa and family could not know this, there had been a long discussion about opening the casket. Since no one knew what state the body was in, it was decided not to open the casket. I often thought it was ironic that Val's body would be prepared by a classmate for his funeral a half world away.

After Val had gone into the army, Grandpa wrote a letter to the Department of the Army asking if Val could be released from the Army on a hardship case. Grandpa wrote that he was 65 years old, a farmer and rancher. Grandpa listed all of his acreage he owned, all of the crops he had planted, listed the equipment, etc. and since Val was his only son at home, Val was needed to help him to carry out the farming and ranching work. Grandpa never did receive an answer.

Vivian said that her mom, Annie, never did talk very much about Val. They were especially close as a brother and sister. She was ten years older than Val. Aunt Annie felt like a mom to Val since she took care of him so much. Grandma would do all of the work inside and outside the house so Aunt Annie felt she almost raised Val. When Val got killed, she was very crushed by his death.

Val is buried in St. Anthony's cemetery beside his parents. The picture that is on his headstone is in remarkable good shape after being in the Texas hot sun for 60 years.

Valentine - you may be gone but definitely not forgotten.