EVERETT — World War I gripped Everett in the spring of 1917.
America’s entrance into the war came just as Everett, the city of Smokestacks, was reeling from a deadly labor battle on the waterfront.
The fight a world away gripped the gritty mill town. By the hundreds, young men marched
off to war. The people left behind threw parades and bought war bonds.
Frank Buckles of Morgantown, W. Va., the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, died Sunday at age 110. Everett had its World War I heroes, too, including nearly 400 who had attended Everett High School. The list from Snohomish County is far longer.
All are gone.
There’s something poignant about losing that last living human link to something that affected the country so fundamentally, said Dave Dilgard, an Everett historian.
“There’s that living, breathing connection,” he said. “Those people are a remarkable nexus with something long gone because they are still there. When you lose them, it’s like a door closes.”
One of Everett’s World War I veterans was Thornton Sullivan, the namesake for Everett’s park at Silver Lake.
He was born in 1899 in Everett and nicknamed Jack. When he was 10, he beat out hundreds of other children countywide by selling the most Herald subscriptions to win a Shetland pony. Maybe that was an early sign of his work ethic.
A month after turning 18, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. His enlistment in April 1917 came one day after front-page newspaper coverage of the first contingent of soldiers leaving Everett on a Great Northern train.
The Everett Herald reporter on the scene described 2,000 people gathered for the sendoff, with hundreds of women and men openly weeping.
“Yet spectators who had no loved one among the conscripted men felt a tightening of the throat muscles at realizing that, it may be, not all young men who entered the country’s service today will return,” the reporter wrote.
Sullivan was sent to Mare Island, a Navy base in California. He became a member of the 81st Company of the 2nd Division, and left for France that August.
He saw action and was gassed in the Champagne operations. After six weeks in the hospital, he returned to fight in the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
After the war’s end, he returned to Everett and to the world of high school, serving as football team manager for the 1919 season. In the yearbook, his classmates had this to say: “Thornton got the Croix de Guerre with a Palm for bravery in France and got a big E for bravery in face of heavy bombardment and abuse from the members of the football team.”
If Sullivan talked about the details of his service, he didn’t do so publicly. Later, Sullivan became known around Everett for being a business owner and for long service to the city’s parks board, Dilgard said.
In his obituary in 1970, there’s no mention at all of his military service or the prestigious award he earned: the Croix de Guerre, the cross of war. The French bestowed the award to Sullivan and a citation for bravery in action.
“He didn’t make much of his war experience later on,” Dilgard said.
It’s not clear who the last World War I veteran from Snohomish County was and when he left us, he said.
What is clear is they fought for their country and those that returned invested their lives in building this city. If you walk around Everett and know where to look, you can find reminders.
These are the men who formed the Everett American Legion. The post went on to provide support and services not only to veterans, but to the larger community.
The local post, as part of the national organization, helps provide college scholarships and sponsors a high school oratorical contest.
The group’s most visible and expansive project is the American Legion Golf Course and Memorial Park in north Everett. The World War I veterans donated the land and $10,000 to remember lost soldiers.
“That human link is important,” Dilgard said. “When you lose it, you lose the last of those experiences.”
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com
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