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Ernie Pyle WWII Museum hosts inaugural jeep show

July 10, 2025June 30, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

The Ernie Pyle WWII Museum will host a Jeep Show on Saturday, July 12 from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. EST in Pyle’s hometown of Dana, Indiana.

Jeep owners can enter their vehicle into the show for a $20 pre-registration fee or $25 the day of the show. The first 100 entries will receive a customized dash plaque. Military classes include WWII Era, Korean War Era, Vietnam War Era, Hummer/Modern Day. Jeep classes include Best Flat Fender, Best CJ, Best TJ, Best JL, Best YJ, Best JK, Best JT, and Open Class. Awards will be announced at 2:30 p.m. Download an informational flyer here. Register for the show at here. The QR code to register can be found on the Ernie Pyle WWII Museum Facebook page.

In addition to the Jeep show there will be a vendor fair, and food and drinks will be available.

The famous WWII correspondent had written affectionately about the Jeep from the Allied Headquarters in North Africa on June 4, 1943: “And the jeep-good Lord, I don’t think we could continue the war without the jeep. It does everything. It goes everywhere. It’s as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for, and still keeps on going. It doesn’t even ride so badly after you get used to it.”

All veterans and active military personnel will be recognized during the show at 11 a.m. This includes visitors as well as Jeep show participants. Pyle, who was killed in the Pacific Theater on April 18, 1945, continues to have a positive impact on U.S. troops and their families. It was Pyle’s suggestion to Congress in 1944 that our ‘fighting men get fight pay’ that initiated what Congress passed as the ‘Ernie Pyle Bill’ providing soldiers with a 50 percent pay increase for combat service.

July 2025 also marks the 50^th anniversary of when the birthplace of Ernie Pyle was saved by the organization of volunteers, Friends of Ernie Pyle, and moved to downtown Dana. It was built in 1851 and once stood southwest of town. It was moved to town in July of 1975 and became part of the Ernie Pyle WWII Museum. In 2021, the house, the Elder-Pyle House, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The museum is open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sundays from Noon-5 p.m. from May through Veterans Day. It is located at 120 Briarwood Ave, Dana, Indiana. To arrange a group or special tour on another day, call the museum at 765-554-3633 or email director@erniepyle.org

Above: The Ernie Pyle WWII Museum’s 1944 Ford Jeep is parked in front of the museum in Dana, Indiana. The museum will host a Jeep Show Saturday, July 12 in Dana. Photo by Andy Chandler.

Summer 2025 Ernie Pyle WWII Museum events

May 22, 2025May 21, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

JUNE

• Flag Day Celebration • 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, June 14 • Free

Join us for a celebration of our country’s Flag Day at the museum. There will be a flag program and painting from 10 a.m.-noon and 2-4 p.m. Sections of the museum’s fence will be available to paint and take home with you. There will be an ice cream social fro noon-2 p.m.

JULY

• Jeep Show • 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, July 12 • $20 pre-registration, $25 day of registration

The Ernie Pyle WWII Museum is sponsoring its inaugural Jeep Show on Saturday, July 12, 10 AM-3 PM EST in Dana, Indiana. There will be military and Jeep categories for the vehicles, prizes, dash plaques for the first 100 Jeeps. Vendor show and food available. Veterans recognized at 11 a.m.; awards at 2:30 p.m. Proceeds benefit the museum. Register here.

AUGUST

The annual Ernie Pyle Fireman’s Festival is in August. Check back for more information on this and other events,12

Ernie Pyle’s last column: On victory in Europe

April 18, 2025March 18, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

Editor’s note: Ernie Pyle’s last, unfinished column was found in his pocket on April 18, 1945, the day he was killed on the island of Ie Shima.

And so it is over. The catastrophe on one side of the world has run its course. The day that it had so long seemed would never come has come at last. I suppose our emotions here in the Pacific are the same as they were among Allies all over the world. First a shouting of the good news with such joyous surprise that you would think the shouter himself had brought it about.

And then an unspoken sense of gigantic relief-and then a hope that the collapse in Europe would hasten the end in the Pacific.

It has been seven months since I heard my last shot in the European War. Now I am as far away from it as it is possible to get on this globe.

This is written on a little ship lying off the coast of the Island of Okinawa, just south of Japan, on the other side of the world from Ardennes.

But my heart is still in Europe, and that’s why I am writing this column.

It is to the boys who were my friends for so long. My one regret of the war is that I was not with them when it ended.

For the companionship of two and a half years of death and misery is a spouse that tolerates no divorce. Such companionship finally becomes a part of one’s soul, and it cannot be obliterated.

True, I am with American boys in the other war not yet ended, but I am old-fashioned and my sentiment runs to old things.

To me the European War is old, and the Pacific War is new.

Last summer I wrote that I hoped the end of the war could be a gigantic relief, but not an elation. In the joyousness of high spirits it is so easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would not wish themselves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks.

But there are so many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

Dead men by mass production-in one country after another-month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

Those are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went way and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference.

We hope above all things that Japan won’t make the same stubborn mistake that Germany did. You must credit Germany for her courage in adversity, but you can doubt her good common sense in fighting blindly on long after there was any doubt whatever about the outcome.

• Read President Harry Truman’s announcement to the country of Ernie Pyle’s death in 1945 here.

Ernie Pyle killed April 18, 1945; President Truman announces death to nation

April 19, 2025March 15, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

After Ernie Pyle was killed on the island of Ie Shima on April 18, 1945, President Harry Truman announced the news to the nation in the statement below. Pyle’s death came a week after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt.

The nation is quickly saddened again by the death of Ernie Pyle. No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told. More than any other man he became the spokesman of the ordinary American in arms doing so many extraordinary things. It was his genius that the mass and power of our military and naval forces never obscured the men who made them.

He wrote about a people in arms as people still, but a people moving in a determination which did not need pretensions as a part of power.

Nobody knows how many individuals in our forces and at home he helped with his writings. But all Americans understand now how wisely, how warmheartedly, how honestly he served his country and his profession. He deserves the gratitude of all his countrymen.

— Harry S. Truman

• Listen to Ernie Pyle’s last column here.

• Listen to the museum podcast: The 80th anniversary of Ernie Pyle’s death here.

• View the 46-minute Story of Ernie Pyle here

Newspapers across the country carried news of Ernie Pyle’s death. During WWII, his column ran in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers. A 1944 Time magazine profile noted the millions of avid readers who, “… write letters to him, pray for him, telephone their newspapers to ask about his health and safety.”

Ernie Pyle visits with Marines aboard the USS Charles Carroll en-route to Okinawa in March of 1945. Weeks later he was killed on the island of Ie Shima. His last, unfinished, hand-written column was found in his shirt pocket, Photo from the National Archives.

Harry Momi, a tank commander in the 77th Infantry Division during WWII, took the last photo of Ernie Pyle less than 24 hours before he was killed. Momi donated the photo to the museum in 2015.

This sign was the first marker noting the site of Pyle’s death. It was built by Corporal Landon Seidler on the day Pyle was killed, April 18, 1945. Photo courtesy of IU Archives.

The second memorial to mark the spot of Pyle’s death was erected on May 10, 1945 after Ie Shima had been safely secured. Photo courtesy of IU Archives.

The third and final memorial on Ie Shima was erected by the 1118th Combat Engineer Group. It was dedicated on July 2, 1945. Paul R. Noyes and Joseph P. Gallagher sent this image to John Stempel, head of the Indiana University Department of Journalism. Stempel and Pyle were classmates at IU in the 1920s. Photo courtesy of IU Archives.

Museum to commemorate 80th anniversary of Ernie Pyle’s death

April 2, 2025March 11, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

April 18 wreath laying at monument replica among events planned in 2025

A special ceremony is planned for this spring to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Ernie Pyle’s death.

The Ernie Pyle Remembrance Ceremony will take place from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. on Friday, April 18, at the Ernie Pyle Rest Park on U.S. 36. The rest park is located about three miles east of Dana in Vermillion County, Indiana.

The event is sponsored by the Friends of Ernie Pyle and open to the public.

The Ernie Pyle Rest Park is home to a monument dedicated to Pyle’s memory. It is an exact replica of the monument that currently stands on the small island of Ie Shima, near Okinawa in the South Pacific, where Pyle was killed by enemy fire in the waning months of World War II.

Pyle achieved fame as a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent covering the war in Europe and Africa in the early 1940s. After reporting and writing columns for American newspapers as Allied forces led by the U.S. military invaded, battled and eventually defeated Nazi Germany and its allies, Pyle returned to the states to take a break from his journalistic work. As the war in Europe subsided, he decided to turn his attention to covering the war being waged against Japan.

On April 18, 1945, Pyle was traveling with a U.S. Army entourage on Ie Shima when the group came under attack. Pyle was struck and killed by a Japanese machine gunner’s bullet. He was 44 years old.

The men of the 77th Infantry Division erected the monument that still stands at the site of his death. Its inscription reads: “At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945.”

The Friends of Ernie Pyle will lay a wreath at the replica of that monument during the remembrance ceremony. Other plans for the ceremony remain in the works.

The story of Ernie Pyle: From Indiana farm boy to beloved war correspondent

April 17, 2025February 25, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

This 45-minute video chronicles the life of Ernie Pyle from his birth in Dana, Indiana, through his career as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist telling the stories of soldiers fighting in WWII.

Museum receives $50,000 Legacy Grant

March 26, 2025February 19, 2025 by Ruth Witmer

FEP representatives received a check representing a $50,000 Legacy Grant from the Vermillion County Community Foundation on Feb. 19 at the museum in Dana, Indiana. The money will fund a statue garden as part of the museum’s expansion project, the Ernie Pyle & Veterans Memorial Park. A bronze statue by Bill Wolfe will be dedicated there this year.

Pictured above from left: FEP board members Becky Holbert, Max Jones, Steve Key and museum director Tracy Jones. Photo by Andy Chandler.

Friends of Ernie Pyle 1940s USO-style fundraiser brings in nearly $5,000 for the Ernie Pyle & Veterans Memorial Park project

December 14, 2024November 5, 2024 by Ruth Witmer

Friends of Ernie Pyle present 1940s USO-style fundraiser Nov. 2

November 2, 2024October 25, 2024 by Ruth Witmer

Tickets on sale now for dinner, show to benefit memorial park project

The Friends of Ernie Pyle are set to transport people back in time with WWII-era entertainment and dinner. Tickets are $10 per person for the dinner and $15 per person for the performance that follows. Ticket sales will raise funds for the FEP’s latest project — the Ernie Pyle and Veterans Memorial Park.

The event will take place at South Vermillion High School, 776 Wildcat Dr., in Clinton, Indiana. Dinner is 4:30-6:30 p.m., and the show begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2.

Performers include students from both North and South Vermillion High Schools, professional musicians and more, said Becky Holbert, chair of the FEP operations committee and one of the event organizers.

“We’re thrilled to bring this USO-style show to the Wabash Valley to honor veterans and today’s military,” Holbert said. “It’s one more opportunity to share the legacy and writings of Ernie Pyle while showcasing local, regional and military talent.”

FEP is a charitable foundation that runs the Ernie Pyle WWII Museum in Dana, Indiana. The group is committed to honoring the legacy of the legendary WWII correspondent and the memory of those who served in our nation’s Armed Forces. FEP previously organized a USO-style show in 2018. That event raised more than $3,100 for the museum. Funds raised from this event will go toward the memorial park project including developing land adjacent to the museum to provide a gathering space for the community, performance stage, healing garden and more. The park will also feature an already commissioned bronze statue of Ernie Pyle created by Clinton sculptor Bill Wolfe.

Ben West, North Vermillion High School director of bands and choirs, said the audience can expect to enjoy an evening showcasing a variety of acts — musical and otherwise — in the fashion of the WWII-era USO stage show.

The USO, United Service Organizations, was founded in 1941 as a non-profit entity. It is known for providing live entertainment to boost the morale of members of the U.S. Armed Services. This museum fundraiser is taking its inspiration from those USO performances known as “camp shows.” The shows started during WWII and have featured singers, dancers, comedians and celebrities through the years.

West is working with Halea Ellis, South Vermillion High School choir director, and Marilyn Fisher, a retired teacher from South Vermillion who served as the director of the 2018 FEP show.

“This event has been a fun and challenging opportunity for our students to work on,” West said. “I think the community will be pleased to see many professional and amateur acts come together in this honoring of traditional stage performance — with the format of a 1940s-era USO show no less.”

Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Ernie Pyle WWII Museum, 120 Briarwood Ave., in Dana, Indiana, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon-5 p.m. on Sunday. For more information about the Nov. 2 fundraiser, text 812-249-5780. For more information about the Ernie Pyle WWII Museum and the Ernie Pyle and Veterans Memorial Park project, visit erniepyle.org.

Pictured above: Takoma Wisor and Olivia Haney perform to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” during a 1940s USO-style show at the Helt Fire Department in 2018. The Friends of Ernie Pyle are hosting another show taking inspiration from WWII-era entertainment on Saturday, Nov. 2 at South Vermillion High School in Clinton, Indiana.

Indiana woman to donate unusual artifact to Ernie Pyle Museum during annual festival

August 7, 2024August 7, 2024 by Ruth Witmer

“Short snorter” signed by famous journalists, boxing champion, actor & others will be on display

The Ernie Pyle World War II Museum will receive formally a “short snorter” signed by Ernie Pyle and several other notable figures during the annual Ernie Pyle Fireman’s Festival in Dana, Indiana, on Saturday, Aug. 10. The presentation be 5:30 p.m., on the festival main stage. The artifact was signed by Pyle and others just three and a half weeks before he was killed on Ie Shima during the Okinawa invasion.

The tradition of short snorters originated with Alaskan bush pilots in the 1920s, but spread to other commercial pilots and the military, particularly during World War II. The pilots learned quickly than alcohol and flying didn’t mix well, so their portions or “snorts” of whiskey were less than others while imbibing at local watering holes. They became short snorters and the term became associated with the dollar bills fellow pilots would sign and exchange. When the pilots met again, if one didn’t still have the “short snorter” in his possession, it was his obligation to buy the other pilot’s drinks.

Click here for a complete schedule of festival activities.

Dr. Angie Bethel of Carmel is donating the artifact on behalf of her parents Doyle and Elvie “Bobbie” Bethel. It was Bobbie who received the signed dollar bill years ago in change from a purchase she made. Noticing the handwriting on the bill, she set it aside rather than spending it somewhere else. In 1974, Doyle wrote another signer of the short snorter, Pacific War correspondent Robert Sherrod a letter to try and determine where the bill was signed and who were the other signers.

Sherrod, a correspondent for Time and Life magazines in the Pacific, went on after the war to become an editor of the Saturday Evening Post and vice-president of Curtis Publishing Co. He affirmed that the bill had to have been signed at the March 25, 1945, farewell party held on Asor Island, a part of the Ulithi Atoll where the invasion armada preparing for Okinawa were anchored. The task force set sail for Okinawa the next day.

The party for war correspondents, military brass, and nurses from six hospital ships was hosted by the base commander, O.O. “Scrappy” Kessing. After the war, Kessing became the commissioner of the All American Football Conference – an early rival of the NFL, which folded in the early 1950s, but provided the NFL the San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns, along with the name for the original Baltimore franchise – the Colts. Kessing’s signature is on the bill.

Sherrod recalled that everyone got drunk that night and that Ernie Pyle was “the lion of the party.” Pyle apparently initiated the short snorter – writing “To Margaret Clift From Ernie Pyle.” Clift was a nurse on the U.S.S. Hope, a hospital ship that had arrived at Ulithi on March 20. She was one of 70 nurses and two female Norwegian radio operators who attended the party. It was a rarity to have women at a party during the war. Sherrod wrote Doyle that the hospital ship doctors were “sore” because the nurses didn’t return onboard until 4 to 5 a.m.

At this point, we have no idea the path the dollar bill took when Clift’s ship left Ulithi or where it exactly came into the Bethel’s possession. Clift was from Lewiston, Idaho. A scrapbook of photos from the war belonging to her now resides with the Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Two surprising autographs on the short snorter are heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey and actor/director Jackie Cooper, whose real name was John Cooper Jr.. Dempsey joined the Coast Guard during the war and was in Ulithi preparing to command an assault boat onto the beaches of Okinawa. Cooper, who was a child actor and part of the “Our Gang” cast later played newspaperman Perry White in the 1978 Superman movie that starred Christopher Reeve. Cooper served in the Navy during World War II, but we don’t know at this point why he was at Ulithi or whether he was part of the Okinawa invasion.

“We are thrilled that Dr. Bethel decided to donate this artifact created by Ernie less than a month before he died to our museum,” said Steve Key, president of the board of the Friends of Ernie Pyle Development Fund, Inc., which operate the Dana museum. “The short snorter is an example of how the war brought people from diverse backgrounds all across the United States together in unusual places all across the globe.”