Former Army postal clerk is a man of the people

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com


Jim Casey calls himself a “people person,” a trait his resume clearly confirms. In one way or another, be it his time as a postal clerk with the U.S. Army, his decades-spanning career as a bus driver, or his more recent deeds as an active member of Newtown's American Legion Post 440, this 69-year-old Newtown resident has long been a faithful public servant, a true man of the people.

Born and raised in Port Richmond, Philadelphia, Casey is the eldest male in a family with seven children. His parents, James and Regina, bore two other boys and four girls. (Casey's brothers – Richard, who passed away last year, and Joe – are also veterans.) Casey graduated from Philadelphia's Northeast Catholic High School for Boys in 1958 and, that same year, he attempted to join the Navy.

“I wanted to go into the Navy in the worst way,” Casey says in an interview at Post 440, “but they turned me down because of a trick knee [one susceptible to locking in place]. It gave out during my physical. So, the Army got me.”

Casey says he ended up in the Army via a “push-up draft,” a process by which one branch of the military adopts would-be soldiers from another. At 19, he headed off to Fort Hood, Texas for basic training. There he was part of the “B Company” of the 2nd Armored Division tank unit, a.k.a. “Hell on Wheels.” After eight weeks he left for Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, where he attended postal school for a little over a month and received his certification as a military postal clerk.

On October 25, 1959 in Oakland, Califonia, Casey boarded a four-engine, PC-6 commercial airliner that would put him on a path to Korea (he still has his boarding pass, which is scrawled with the sentence: “I'm leaving my country”). It took three days for the plane to arrive at Tachikawa air base in Japan, though Casey says it felt like three months. Following a brief debriefing, he soon landed in Seoul, Korea, home of the 19th Army Postal Unit.

It was Casey's responsibility to monitor incoming and outgoing mail. He and/or his colleagues would take daily, two-hour trips down a dirt road to Korea's Kimpo Air Force Base. There they'd pick up bundles of letters and packages, load up their truck, haul everything back, sort it and pass it on to delivery men for distribution (the reverse process would take place for U.S.-bound items, which would be flown out of Kimpo and into San Francisco). Once a month, Casey and company would also need to pick up “boat mail,” considerably larger packages that arrived by ship at the nearby port of Incheon. Though these jobs included heavier cargo, Casey says the most burdensome deliveries were those of the dreaded “Dear John” letters – break-up notifications from girlfriends back home.

“When guys got 'Dear John' letters,” Casey says, “they'd often come looking for the mailmen. They'd blame us for delivering them. In fact, we used to have a sign on one of the mail trucks that said 'Dear John Express.' The guys would get really upset about it, but (the letters weren't) our fault.”

Another duty of the 19th Army Postal Unit was transporting classified material from Seoul's 8th Army Headquarters to the Kimpo base. Though Casey only did it twice for training drills, soldiers from the postal unit would drive armored trucks containing the sensitive items, which would then be flown out of the country.

When his 13-month tour of duty ended, Casey hit a couple of snags trying to get home. First, the man who was set to replace him didn't show, and he had to stick around longer than anticipated. Then, when he finally got on the USS Mitchell (the ship that would bring him back to the States), it collided with a British vessel not far from shore, forcing it to re-dock and undergo repairs. Casey says if he had stayed in Korea, he would have been given a promotion, but that wasn't enough to persuade him.

“There was no way I was gonna spend a second Christmas in Korea,” he said. “I wanted to get home.”

Getting home took 19 days. Casey got back to America in November of 1960. Waiting for him there was Ann, his grade school sweetheart who's still with him today. The couple got married in 1962, moved to Mayfair, and eventually had three children: Maureen, Jim and Mary Beth. Also in 1962 (three years before he was officially discharged from the Army), Casey got a job as a Septa bus driver, a job he'd keep for the next 38 years.

He and Ann moved to Newtown in 2000. Almost immediately after they arrived, Casey got involved with Post 440. He started as the First Rental Chairman (putting him in charge of renting out the Post hall), moved up to Junior Vice Commander, then Senior Vice Commander, then Post Commander, a position he held from 2005 to 2007. Today, he's the liaison to the Boy Scout troop that meets at the Post; he runs the Post's Memorial Day parade; he hosts a Veterans Day ceremony at Council Rock South; and he's also the president of an association for retired Septa bus drivers. Usually, though, he can be seen poking around Post 440. He's technically known as the head of the house committee, but he prefers a much more serve-the-people-type title.

“I call myself the janitor,” he says.

Killed on the battlefields of France, this tragic WWI tale sent his prominent family into a downward spin.

By Peter Ciferri, BucksLocalNews.com

Newtown historian Mike Donovan says it's enough to make a movie - maybe even two.The story behind the death of Morell Smith doesn't end with the tragic tale of a Newtownian felled in the line of duty while serving his country, it continues on with the long and painful story of a prominent family crushed by their loss.

Ninety years ago last October, Smith was declared missing in action and later declared killed on the muddy battlefields of France.

He was the only Newtown resident killed in World War I and his legacy sparked Newtown's then newly-formed American Legion Post No. 440 to be named in his honor - a distinction still held today.

The son of Dr. Charles Smith and Mrs. Ann Smith of Newtown, Morell Smith was killed while patrolling with three other men at daybreak. According to newspaper reports, the volunteer patrol moved through a wooded area "in the cover of dawn," only separated by a few yards when "machine gun snipes opened up."

Three of the men were killed, with the other soldier escaping uninjured with bullet holes in his backpack. Smith's death was "instantaneous," but it would take six years for that message to reach his family and community.When word of his disappearance hit Newtown, Smith's father wanted answers. Devastated and enraged, Dr. Smith went to Washington some months later looking for closure - but all he got was a chillingly brief "mission in action" reply from government officials.

A cable delivered shortly after the visit further elucidated that "he was believed to have been killed and buried by the Germans."

"Lieut. Smith's body may lie on the slope by the foemen, who held the ground for some days, or it may repose at the great cemetery at Romague, nearby among the Unknown Dead," a newspaper article read. "It matters but little in the ultimate."

It would not be until July 3, 1924, after "an extensive and painstaking investigation," that the office of the Quartermaster General would finally report Smith's body was found and could be returned. He was, and is now, buried beneath a solemn boulder situated in Newtown Cemetery.

Just weeks before his death, Morell wrote his family, thanking them for sending "the photo of the Red Cross workers in Newtown" and describing the vibrant Bastille Day activities in France. He affectionately professed that more letters were on the way and championed his role as an American fighter.

But those letters would never come and Smith would never see the end of that fighting. For Dr. Smith, the pain of losing a son to the cold hand of war was too much to bear.

A prominent Newtown physician, Dr. Smith sunk into a deep and visible depression. Newspaper reports speak of him mourning after his son was taken at the hands of Germans.

"Close friends say he never fully recovered from the shock," a Newtown Enterprise story read. Reports also indicated the doctor's physical health also deteriorated.Then, on Dec. 11, 1927, at around 3 p.m., Dr. Smith wrote a note in his office reading, "I am going to see Stacy Brown [a lifelong friend of the Smiths] and then on to the cemetery." He repeated that same message to his wife and left his home never to return.When Mrs. Smith found the note, she called Brown to see if her husband was there.

Alarmed that the depressed man was missing, Brown rushed to the Newtown Cemetery where she found his car parked near the family plots.

She leapt from her vehicle and rushed to the grizzly and tragic scene. There, across a blanket stretched over his son's grave, lay the lifeless body of Dr. Charles Smith. He put five bullets in his heart that afternoon. Ann Smith died in 1945, her life torn by bullets in her son and husband.

Morell Smith's legacy continues to be honored.Each year, a Memorial Day dedication is held at his grave and recently, the U.S. government awarded him a Purple Heart - but the weight his life and death left on his family could never be lifted.

Yardley police officer fought in Baghdad and Fallujah

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

After more than two years in the U.S. Army, William Golden was preparing for a return to civilian life, and then he witnessed the horrific acts of Sept. 11, 2001. On Sept. 12, 2001, with less than three weeks remaining on his commitment to the Army, Golden's sense of patriotism forced him to re-enlist.

"I was going to get out at the end of the month," said Golden, who is a police officer in Yardley Borough. "I had already started my transition back to civilian life, but the next day I enlisted again. I have always been patriotic and loved my country, and then 9-11 happened and it was the right thing to do."

During the first two years of his service, Golden was a scout, doing reconnaissance work and training, while stationed in New York. After re-enlisting, Golden was stationed in Germany, and then, in April 2003, all of his training was put to use in Iraq.

"As a scout, you go out and gather enemy intelligence," said Golden. "You look for where the battalions are, how many troops they have, along with cleaning up roadside bombs so the main units could go from Kuwait to Baghdad. Our vehicles had a 25-mm cannon and thermal imaging to find and blow the bombs."

Golden said that this work was important because other than the roadside bombs, there wasn't much resistance between Kuwait and Baghdad.

"When we crossed the border from Kuwait, they had a lot of their tanks dug in, but the weird part was that they were all unmanned," said Golden. "Most of them were damaged from the first Gulf War. The soldiers pretty much retreated when they saw us coming."

After clearing the way to Baghdad, Golden said the missions became harder because of the Iraqi soldiers and the placement of the bombs throughout the city.

"On the way to Baghdad, clearing the roadside bombs was pretty easy," said Golden. "It didn't get hard to do until we got to Baghdad and the bombs were on the side roads and you were getting attacked at the same time. We were in a Bradley, so rifle fire wouldn't do much to us. If it was something you were protected from, you just pushed on and completed the mission, but sometimes members of the Iraqi army would wear civilian clothes and engage you with RPGs while standing next to innocent bystanders."

After a full year in Iraq, Golden and his unit were back in Kuwait, waiting to get on the plane to head back to Germany when their captain came in and told them they were headed to Fallujah to help stop the insurgency, which had just begun in that part of Iraq.

"In Fallujah it was different because that was just straight combat," said Golden. "The insurgents had pretty much taken over Fallujah. We had to go take it back. If anyone engaged you, you engaged them back until they surrendered or, for lack of a better term, exhausted their means of engaging you."

After leaving the Army in 2004, Golden continued serving his country, just at a more local level, putting himself through the police academy, and then working part-time for both the Yardley Borough Police Department and the Bristol Borough Police Department. Golden is now a full-time police officer in Yardley Borough.

"I guess it doesn't matter what branch of the service you are in, but you find things inside you that you didn't know were there," said Golden. "I didn't know they were there, when I got home, I wanted to keep doing it and serving my community."

During his time in the Army, Golden reached the rank of sergeant, and received numerous medals, including the War on Terrorism Medal, the Iraqi Campaign Medal and the Expeditionary Medal.