Hi; Just a little information from this side concerning one of our relations. These are items I gleaned from the newspapers, magazines and other sources. Most of it came from Lee Millers, "The Story of Ernie Pyle." I have doing a book for my children and hope to have all the answers about the ancestors by then. Hopefully, most of those answers will come from YOU! Here goes, enjoy! Ernie Pyle Ernie Pyle Was born on August 3, 1900 and was raised on the the Sam Elder farm in Helts , Indiana where his father William Clyde Pyle was a tenant farmer. William Clyde Pyle and my grandfather Uylesses S. Grant (Pop) Pyle were first cousins. Ernie was raised on the farm in very poor conditions, he hated farming and said that his worst nightmare was the south end of a horse going north, reffering to the many hours he spent plowing . This was sort of a variation on "if you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes!" While his friends were drafted for service into the first world war, Ernie was 5"2" tall and weighed a little over 100 pounds. Not able to pass a physical, he entered Indiana State University where he studied Journalism from 1919 to 1923. He left school just months before graduating to become a cub reporter in Laporte, Indiana. Ernie worked for the Washington Post, The New York Journal and Scripps-Howard's newspapers before becoming a war correspondent. Ernie was famous for his columns he wrote about the fighting man during the second world war, but was actually a syndicated columnist in almost 100 newspapers before he went to Europe. He was known for his homey human interest stories and as the "Hoosier Vagabond," he filed articles from across the United States, South America and Central America and he and his "rider," as he called his wife visited every state in nine months in their little roadster. He was managing editor of Scripps-Howard newspapers in New York at one time and at wars end had syndicated columns in almost 200 major newspapers. He saw more war than most of our fighting men and reported from foxholes, under trees and where ever he could set up his typewriter. Hal Boyle, a correspondent with the Associated Press called himself "The poor mans Pyle" while Ernest Hemingway a fellow correspondent refered to himself as "Ernest, the rich man's hemorroid." Ernie hated the war and spent as much of his time in the field with his soldiers. Twice in Europe he came close to death and received a Purple Heart for wounds he received at Anzio Beachhead. He was most proud of his Pulitzer prize won for distinguished correspondence in 1943. Once a sacreligious soldier refered to Ernie as a "Poor man's god". The Indiana University Alumni Monthly picked it up and reported that his writing was reminiscent of the Bible. When Ernie received a copy, he pouted for days and when they asked him why he didn't feel honored, he replyed with that chuckle of his, "I never did think the Bible was very well written." While living in New York, Ernie and his wife Jerry opened up their apartment to friends from the air mail service and began writing a column devoted to the aviators that flew the mail planes. He retired his aviation column after his promotion to managing editor of the newspaper and in 1932 Amelia Earhart presented him with the expensive gold watch he was wearing when he was killed by Japanese sniper fire in the Ryuku Islands on April 18, 1945. First buried on Ie Shima, his body was later transferred to Punchbowl Crater in Hawaii. His wife Jerry died nine months later. On April 18, 1995 in Dana, Indiana, public ceremonies were held featuring dedications of two new museums next to the home where Ernie was born, now a state memorial site. Attending these ceremonies were Bill Mauldin, the Pulitzer Prrze winning cartoonist, Burgess Meredith who played the part of Ernie in "G.I. Joe", Paul Tibbets who piloted the plane responsible for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and William Windom who has played Ernie for years in a one man show. Andy Rooney who at the age of 22 and a reporter for the Stars & Stripes in Europe, shared a tent with Ernie and reported that "Pyle was a most delightful drunk!" and still remembers him tap dancing out of the tent flap in his long underwear. Once when there were bees flying out of a hole in the dirt floor, Andy was covering the holes because he had visions of hundreds of adults and their babies down there coming to attack them. Ernie told Andy to leave them alone and later wrote that he could not see how a survivor of war could ever be cruel to anyone or anything ever again! Ron Pyle