By Blair Baumgartner
InkFreeNews

Veteran John Hurd is shown holding up his Honor Flight T-shirt which was presented to him when he took part in an honor flight for veterans to Washington, D.C., in 2017. Hurd has lived in the Milford area nearly his entire life. Photo by Blair Baumgartner.

MILFORD — United States Army veteran John Hurd was born in Milford in 1936. “The water mains were freezing in Milford at that time. I was born in the back bedroom at the corner of 4th and James streets,” said Hurd.

“When my dad, Eldon Hurd, came home from World War II, we bought the brick house on Main Street and dad eventually started his dental business there.

“My mom, Agnes Hurd, started keeping the books for Sharp Hardware in 1939 and worked there all the way through the war years. She eventually started helping my dad with his dental business until the time he passed away in 1963.

“During the war years, she worked at the hardware store during the day before I started school and my grandmother babysat me. She didn’t have any toys. I remember playing with a cardboard box and an old blue porcelain cooking cover and that was my steering wheel,” Hurd said, laughing.

“After World War II, there was an oil refinery right outside of Milford. Around 1950 or 1951, it caught fire and one of the storage tank lids blew off and landed near the old Felkner house. I was getting ready for bed and my mom came up and asked me if I dropped something. I jokingly said to her that I think the oil refinery blew up,” he said.

Hurd switched gears and mentioned the Honor Flight he was on in 2017. “I really wanted every veteran in this town to be able to go. If they get the opportunity, they need to do it because you are king for a day. There were World War II veterans as well. We went to the Holocaust Memorial. We went to the Indiana Veteran’s War Memorial. They have a memorial for veterans of every state in the Union,” he said.

“I was active from 1954-1957. I graduated from Milford High in 1954. I worked for Maurice Beer on his farm during the summer months in high school and enlisted on Oct. 12, 1954.

“I ended up in Army security. I received top secret clearance. We intercepted military and diplomatic radio traffic in those days. We copied the world and the world copied us. I went to Fort Devens and went to code school where I learned Morse code. One of the company mottoes was, ‘In God we trust, all others we copy.’ I was an E-5 when I left the Army. I was a specialist second class.

“I remember the feed mill and Wilbur Baumgartner’s coal and ice. He had an ice business and used to make ice out at Milford Lake. The coal company was down on that end, east of the tracks. They unloaded it off of the railroad car and shoveled it on and off,” said Hurd.

“The telephone office was where the old NAPA store is by the library. There were party lines and everyone would listen in to them. If a fire call came in, they had the old plugs to pull out and plug in. During a fire call they called all the fire men on their phone lines. If you called someone on the party line in those days, half the community could listen in. Times have changed so much.

“I was married to Carol on March 23, 1958. I eventually went to work for NIPSCO in 1959 and retired in 1997. I spent 28 years in the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s reserves and retired in 2002. I then hauled parts for Jenkins Automotive and retired in 2015 when I was 80 years old.

“I used to be a student manager for the school basketball team. Everyone went to the Melody Cafe after a ballgame. Paul Kaiser owned it at the time. So did the Mangeses.

“There were so many businesses on that block — the glove factory, the Five and Dime Store, the bank, the old Wuthrich plumbing shop, the hotel, Fuller’s General Store, three dental businesses, a barber shop and Mary Thomas’s Chevrolet.

“I’ve seen a lot of change in this town. I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. I have always liked this town. Other than going to the Army for three years, I’ve been in and around this community all my life,” he said.