MAYSEL - Ronnie Hamrick picked up the Dollar General bag and carefully reached inside.
"This here is a precious book," the Clay County man said as he stood sock-footed in his kitchen. "And I'm thankful to be able to borrow it."
He slowly removed the book, its faded navy cover clashing with the plastic shine of the yellow sack. "YOUNG AMERICAN PATRIOTS, WORLD WAR II, West Virginia," the cover read. He rested the decades-old book on his work table, which held more reference books, a World War II atlas and 10 or so sticky notes, all neatly arranged, some at 45-degree angles.
Hamrick is using those books to complete his own, a local reference book - currently a notebook paper-filled black binder - that, on this day, was splayed open on the table. The lined pages had been run through a printer and bore an entry template filled with handwritten notes for each soldier. There were 788 pages, two soldiers per page. Its working title: "Honor Roll: World War II Veterans from Clay County West Virginia."
Hamrick has been working on his book since 2008. Now he's transferring it to his computer. Toward the end of October - he thinks - he'll be ready to print it, then sell it through the Clay County Landmarks Commission and Historical Society. Truthfully, though, he doesn't want to finish his book - he needs your help to ensure he doesn't.
From somewhere in the kitchen, Big Band music played. Hamrick swung around the room. At one moment he was at his computer, showing a clip from an old Hollywood flick about the Bataan Death March. The next he was digging in a file, rifling through black-and-white photos and postcards of Europe that soldiers had sent home. Then, he was back at his computer, cross referencing the names in his book with those he'd listed on a separate piece of paper. Spanning the width of the paper was a skinny, dark metal bar - a piece of cold-rolled steel - which Hamrick used to mark his place.
Hamrick works on his book when he's not filling blacksmithing orders at Tamarack, or when the weather forces him out of his tiny smithy adjacent to the house. The house was his mother's, and he cared for her there before she died. She used to holler at him from the front porch while he worked, but sometimes he couldn't hear her over the forge and the hammer blows. So, he installed in the smithy a small, round mirror, which gave him a clear view of the porch; she could wave at him and catch his eye. Today that mirror holds only Hamrick's reflection - bespectacled brown eyes and a bushy mustache, planted on his face like a propeller on the nose of an airplane.
"I've always been interested in airplanes," Hamrick said as he sat at his computer. "Ever since I was a kid."
His favorite childhood book showed all the action stations - the gunners' positions, the cockpit, the navigator and bombadier seats - in a B-17 Flying Fortress. The book was cut out in the shape of the World War II four-engine bomber. His cousin was on a similar plane - a B-24 Liberator, according to Hamrick - that was shot down over the North Sea. "Young American Patriots" has an entry for James Harold Hamrick - he's listed as missing.
"I'll hold my composure since we're talking," Hamrick said as he picked up "Young American Patriots" and reached for the yellow bag. "But these guys died. These guys died."
His eyes watered. He eased the book into the yellow bag and gently folded the excess plastic underneath it.
Another of Hamrick's cousins, Leon S. Paxton, is listed as missing - his name is inscribed on a tablet in the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Italy, where the Army Ranger fought at Anzio. Growing up, Hamrick heard stories of his cousins, and their "missing" status was a catalyst for his book. Another, which he noted in a draft of his book's preface, was his experience as a preacher's son.
On the walls of some of the Methodist churches his late father pastored were large wooden plaques - "Honor Roll," they read. The plaques had brass plates engraved with soldiers' names. Some of those plates bore stars.
"Each time I would see one of those plaques I would go and read the names," Hamrick writes, "not realizing the sacrifice that these men had made ... The ones with the stars made the ultimate sacrifice."
According to the National Archives (records from the Army and Army Air Corps, and separate records from the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard), West Virginians accounted for 7,160 casualties in World War II. In 1946, the Navy counted 963 persons killed in combat or prison camps, and the Army classified 3,041 deaths as "killed in action." The Army listed 48 Clay County residents as either dead or missing. The Navy's records did not provide a breakdown by county.
"He digs so deep ... trying to find out what happened to those guys," said his brother, Allen Hamrick, adding that when it's finished, the book will be a reference tool for local families and historians.
The book will include anyone from Clay County that served in World War II, whether at home or abroad, regardless of gender or military occupation, whether they are alive or dead, Ronnie Hamrick said. There are more than 20 data fields for each service man or woman that he'll try to fill, ranging from dates of service to military qualifications, training sites to theaters of operation, awards and citations to personal stories. Piecing together all the information, he said, is like "treasure hunting."
"As long as I've known him, he's never done anything halfway," said Jerry Stover, president of the Clay County Historical Society. "I see him as a fall-back to previous generations."
The book has been intensely researched, Stover said, and he hopes Hamrick's work will inspire other West Virginians to take up similar projects in their own counties.
"We are forgetting the role that these [WWII soldiers] played," Stover said. "Anybody that looks through [Hamrick's book] will have to take a trip back in time."
For the most part, the kitchen in Ronnie Hamrick's house is just as his mother kept it before she died. The living room is unchanged too. The house smells like church hymnals and Bibles, and there are several of each scattered throughout the place. Pictures of his parents hang on the walls.
On a wooden rocking chair in the living room sit two framed pictures, both of cemeteries. One of them shows a white column building fronted by white crosses - the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, where his cousin is memorialized. Hamrick gets chills when he holds it. And his eyes water.
Hamrick never served in the military. His book, he'll tell you, is his way of honoring those who did. When he thinks of the dead World War II veterans, he imagines them alive.
There's a place he goes in his mind when he works on his "war stuff." It's not a departure from reality, he said, and it's not like he's fighting the war. It's more like looking through a family picture album: Yes, his mother and father are gone, but as long as they're in his mind, they're still alive. As he and friends discussed during a recent Sunday school lesson, "one of the most horrible things is to be forgotten."
When his book comes out, it'll have some blank spaces. That's OK, Hamrick said. If a soldier's information is incomplete, it'll at least signal that someone cared enough to look for it in the first place. And it might prompt people to contact him, to help him fill in the blanks - to allow him to keep working.
He's already planning for future editions.
Ronnie Hamrick invites you to contact him if you have information about any service men or women from Clay County who served during World War II, at home or abroad, or with an army of occupation. Email him at clayWW2book@hotmail.com, or write to him at P.O. Box 247, Maysel, WV 25133.