Florida Fallen
Who are the Florida Fallen?
Florida troops, Camp Wheeler, February 1918
Floridians who died in service during “The Great War,” known today as World War I, are honored as the Florida Fallen. In 1924, when Memorial Park was dedicated, the number was thought to be 1,219 men and one woman. Since then, the list has grown by more than 40 percent thanks to one man.
Award-winning retired history professor, Dr. R.B. Rosenburg, former Associate Dean at Clayton State University, Morrow, Georgia, generously gives his time to Memorial Park Association for a project which is helping to preserve Florida’s World War I history and heritage. Ongoing since 2017, Rosenburg’s research project – The Florida WWI Memorial Database: Uncovering military-related deaths during and after the Great War – assists Memorial Park Association to uncover the stories of the men and women who gave their lives in service during World War I. Rosenburg’s research expanded the original list of deaths from 1,220 to more than 1,700 and also filled in the blanks of indiscernible names on the waterlogged memorial scrolls.
Florida Fallen by Dr. R.B. Rosenburg
The best contemporaneous archival source that provides information on Florida’s World War I service-related deaths is the State Archives of Florida…
Florida Fallen Stories
Wiley Haralson Burford
Born in Ocala, Marion County, Florida, on October 31, 1893, Wiley Burford was the second of three sons among five children of Robert Allen Burford (1856-1938), a prominent attorney originally from Dixon Springs, Tennessee, and Ella Louise Murphree (1862-1945), of...
Moses Leonard (Dick) Morgan
Moses Waters was angry at Dick Morgan. Armed with a Winchester rifle, he sent word to Morgan to meet him at Crow Bridge, on Coldwater Creek, about 13 miles from Milton, Florida. After Morgan refused to retract what he had said about him, Waters fired at Morgan,...
Lindley Haines (Diggie) DeGarmo
Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1890, DeGarmo graduated in 1908 from Ridgewood (N.J.) High School, where he played basketball and was advertising manager of the first issue of the school yearbook, The Arrow. Nicknamed “Diggie,” he was the class vice...