Honoring the Past...

Eugene Bosnavits
1940 Brunswick High School Yearbook,
the Aurora.

It started as a simple request. Someone needed a Brunswick yearbook photo from the late 1930's.

The Medina Library does not have the Brunswick High School Yearbooks. The Brunswick Library has some, but none from that time period. Luckily we have built relationships between the libraries in our county and the various historical societies.

The Brunswick Historical Society had what the member needed and scanned and emailed it to us within 24 hours. But there was so much more to the story...

Eugene's family moved to the Brunswick area in 1932, when Eugene was only about 11 years old.

His father, Eugene Bosnavits Sr., a machinist,  came to the United States from his native Hungary in 1907, just two years after his father, Joseph, immigrated.

Records on the family have been hard to track down because of their eastern European name. Eugene, or "Bossy" as he is dubbed in his high school yearbook, nearly always used  BOSNAVITS. But earlier generations used a variety of spellings, such as: BOSNAVITZ, BOSNYAKOVITS, BOSNYAKOVITZ ,BOSNYAWOVITS, and once, BUHSNAKOVITS (in the  1910 Census). Generally, after the family's move to Brunswick, it was Bosnavits and before that it was Bosnyakovits. And Bosnyakovits is the spelling used in the 19th century Hungarian  baptismal records.

I had trouble locating  a birth record for Eugene. It might have been  because of the name or because of a gap in the records but it wasn't available online. A trip to the Medina County Health Department was revealing.

This copy of Eugene's birth certificate show the spelling as "BOSNAKOVITS" and his birthday was
21 October 1921. It shows his parents names and birthplaces of Hungary. BUT...

Eugene's father filed this amended birth certificate in 1945. Why did he bother?

Eugene was an only child. And from his yearbook listings and the few newspaper accounts, he was popular with his fellow students.

Eugene with fellow cast members from "Everybody's Crazy"
Medina Gazette 18 Nov 1938, page 8

Eugene with red square around his head with the cast from the senior class play.
Medina Gazette 7 May 1940, page 8.

The Class Will from the yearbook reads: "Eugene Bonavits leaves his singing ability to Ed Morlock." 

And under class prophesies, "Eugene Bonavits was seen behind the footlights in Grand Opera."

He must have had quite a voice!

After graduation, Eugene got a job as a "shipping and receiving clerk".

But then...

In what must have been a late edition, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin announced the attack on Pearl Harbor.
President Roosevelt declared war and the United States plunged into World War II.

Eugene was not among the first enlistees who couldn't line up fast enough to defend America.

No, it wasn't until September of 1943 that he enlisted.

Medina County Sentinel 30 September 1943, page 8.

As a son and grandson of immigrants who left Europe in the early part of the 20th Century, Eugene was probably discouraged from joining the war effort. His relatives would have seen first hand the horrors of war.  Also, on his Enlistment Record, it says that Eugene was "Single, with dependents" Quite likely his parents, particularly his father, depended on Eugene.

Eugene was assigned to the United States Army Air Force - the precursor to today's U.S. Air Force. And he was trained as a tail gunner for the B-17, going over to England in August of 1944. D-day had passed and Allied forces were slowly winning the war. But they still had to push the German armies back from the occupied territories.

B-17 bombers from the Department of Defense web site.
The B-17 was THE bomber for the U.S in Europe during World War II.

Uncited photo of a tail gunner on a B-17. It was an extremely vulnerable position, but also the aircraft's best
defense against enemy aircraft approaching from the rear. If the gunner had to bail out, he had to first
crawl out of his position and then crawl toward the front of the aircraft.

Just a month into his tour overseas...

Eugene Bosnavits went missing on 12 September
Cleveland Plain Dealer 5 Oct 1944 p. 1.

And almost year after that...

Medina County Gazette 31 July 1945, page 1.
It was shortly after he was declared dead that his father filed the amended birth certificate.
The family needed to prove that he was their son to received benefits.

Eugene's parents had to have been devastated. 

Fold3 has 28 pages of documents on Eugene Bosnavits, Jr., testimony from his crew mates and other witnesses to what happened to the B-17. It was hit with enemy gunfire and the left wing caught fire, eventually igniting the gas tank. The aircraft went into a dive. Some of the crew were able to parachute out. But not Eugene. His last recorded words were "Bombs away!" after the plane had delivered its payload -- i.e. - dropped their bombs. It was believed that Eugene was killed when enemy aircraft fired repeatedly across the aircraft tail. He went down with the plane. A German witness on the ground said that five bodies were pulled from the wreckage. Five out of a crew of 10. 

Not only was Eugene the only Bosnavits son. He was the only grandson. The only one who could have carried the surname on into the future. 

A search for the surname BOSNAVITS/BOSNAVITZ/BOSNYAKOVITS in Ohio directories, turned up 0 names.

The request for Eugene's yearbook photo came from Teresa Hirsch of Indianapolis, Indiana. She volunteers to help the  Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, the Netherlands.

By Rudolphous [CC BY-SA 4.0 
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)],
from Wikimedia Commons

They have created a program called "The Faces of Margraten" to honor the American soldiers, sailors and airmen who lost their lives freeing their country of its Nazi occupiers:

"Unique to the cemetery is the connection with the Dutch people. Since 1945 members of the local community have adopted the grave sites of our fallen. They bring flowers to the cemetery and research the life of the service member as a way to honor their sacrifice. Today, the Foundation for Adopting Graves at the American Cemetery Margraten manages this program. With a similar intention the Foundation United Adopters American War Graves created a program known as The Faces of Margraten. This group collects photos of our fallen, and sponsors a bi-annual event at the cemetery during Dutch Memorial Day weekend. More than 3,000 photos are on display that weekend next to headstones and the Walls of the Missing, bringing visitors face-to-face with their liberators."

The Bosnavits parents must have found a measure of comfort in the visit
of Miss Stoots from Margraten.
Medina Gazette 11 June 1948, page 7.

Indeed, the program had its inception immediately after the war as this article shows:

Eugene's parents lived on, visiting friends and relatives and going on vacations.

Medina County Gazette 12 Sept 1958, page 5

Eugene Sr. died in 1958. Notice in his obituary that it says he had "crippling arthritis" for over 40 years. Yes, Eugene Jr.'s father depended on him.

Medina Gazette 1 July 1963, page 1.

Eugene's mother lived til 1963, dying in a car accident:






























I want to thank my co-worker, Renee Dunn, for bringing this request to me.

And I particular want to thank Teresa Hirsch, not only for bringing this story to my attention and helping bring it alive, but also most especially for her volunteer work with the   Netherlands American Cemetery.

Thank you, ladies!