There are five members of the Y.M.C.A. whose names were included on the Memorial Scrolls, but Charles Loomis was not among them. A descendant of Joseph Loomis, who came from Braintree, England, and settled in Windsor, Connecticut in 1638, Charles Loomis was born in Williamstown, Kentucky, on November 11, 1867, the youngest son of Ezra Keller Loomis (1844-1925) and Francis (Fannie) Mary McCollum, who were married in Pendleton, Kentucky, on October 1, 1863. More than a year earlier, on August 15, 1862, Ezra Loomis and his older brother Ethelbert mustered into the 32nd Kentucky Infantry at Crittenden, Kentucky, engaged in guard and scouting duty at various points in the western part of the state, and participated in the battle of Perryville, October 8, 1862, before being mustered out at Somerset, Kentucky, in late May 1863. For his nine months of service in helping to put down the rebellion, Ezra Loomis would receive an invalid pension from the state of Kentucky from 1891 until his death in Hollywood, California, in July 1925.
Charles Loomis grew up in Williamstown and Stewartsville, Kentucky, both in Grant County and nearly equidistant between Lexington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended medical school in Georgia, graduating with a degree in allopathy from Atlanta Medical College in 1895. The following year he married Harriet (Hattie) McCary Leland (1874-1968) in Madison, Indiana, the youngest of 13 children of the late Edward Gardner Leland (1828-1891), a prominent attorney and judge. By 1897 he was practicing medicine in Vevay, Indiana, about 20 miles up the Ohio River from Madison. On June 8, 1900, a censustaker reported Dr. Charles Loomis, a physician, age 32, was living near Vevay, York Township, Switzerland County, Indiana, with his wife Hattie, age 25, and their two-year-old daughter, Jeannett Adela Loomis (1897-1974). Less than a week later their son, Emerson Keller Loomis (1900-1980), would be born in Florence, about eight miles northeast of Vevay.
Pension record for Ezra K. Loomis.
By 1910, things had taken a turn for the worse for the Loomis family. Charles and Hattie had divorced four years earlier. Hattie had moved back to Madison with her mother and taken the children, while Charles was living by himself in Marion, Indiana, about
150 miles due north. After Charles did not pay child support, Hattie took him to court in Vevay and got him to pay a balance due of $417.50. It was not the only legal trouble.
Charles Loomis found himself in. In September 1916 he was arrested for assault and battery with intent to kill one Lewis David Eakins, a 59-year-old day laborer of Etna Green, Indiana. Henry Whiteman Graham (1848-1922), justice of the peace at nearby Warsaw, found Loomis guilty, fined him $15 and ordered him to pay court costs totaling another $31. The charges evidently stemmed from a paternity suit brought by Pearl Yeazel (1887-1973), who was Eakins’ niece. Loomis was bound over to the circuit court with a bond fixed at $500, but the charges were later dropped.
Charles Loomis practiced medicine in LaPorte, Indiana, from January 1911 to October 1914, when he moved to the small community of Etna Green, about 60 miles west of Fort Wayne, to become the village doctor. In March 1915 he married in Cincinnati Lillian (Lilly) B. Stucy Told (1861-1958), daughter of Samuel Stucy (1837-1914), a Swiss immigrant and a tobacco dealer based in Vevay, Indiana. Lilly was the wealthy widow of Silas Told (1851-1899) and mother of Mabelle Justine Told (1885-1972). Following her husband’s death of influenza in 1918, Mabelle would move to West Palm Beach, Florida, and live with her mother. In early 1916, Charles and Lilly Loomis purchased several lots near the yacht basin in the Royal Park Addition south of Palm Beach, where they built a bungalow on Worth Avenue. Both Lilly and her daughter joined the Woman’s Club and Music Study Club of Palm Beach and were active in the local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Society, and other charitable and social organizations until their deaths.
The Royal Park Addition was a development of the Palm Beach Improvement Company, formed in 1908.
Obituaries for Lilly Loomis (Miami Herald, 10/2/1958) and her daughter,
Mabelle Ziehl (Palm Beach Post, 2/9/1972).
Dr. Loomis apparently also wanted to serve his country. Too old for military service, at age 50 (the maximum age allowed) he applied to work for the American Young Men’s Christian Association overseas. He was reported by the Palm Beach Post of May 2, 1918, as being among eleven local male applicants for the Red Triangle organization. The eleven applicants included: former pineapple grower Ratcliff Montague Hebbert (1866-1932), a native of England who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1894; Charles Bennett Watkins (1882-1962), a merchant who later served as mayor of Palm Beach; Maine native and recent Palm Beach resident Guy Peter Thibeault (1893-1978), who would be drafted by the army in September 1918; Canadian-born carpenter Harry C. McKay (1871-1946), who moved to Palm Beach in 1909; and David Urias Bloodworth (1885-1958), a railroad section foreman originally from South Carolina. After being interviewed by a local committee, chaired by Eli Seigel Ferguson (1862-1942), a local undertaker, and assisted by Rev. L. A. Nye, rector of Holy Trinity of West Palm Beach, none of these men were accepted for Y duty. Having to be “pretty careful as to the character of the men” selected to serve with the Y.M.C.A., the committee chose instead William John Von Behren (1870-1960), a boy scout leader and real estate agent from Logansport, Indiana; Stanley Kell “Scoop” Ryan (1887-1945), advertising manager for the Palm Beach Post; and Dr. Charles Loomis, physician, surgeon, auto driver, and college graduate of Royal Park. After interviewing the men, the committee’s selections were approved by Allison William Honeycutt (1882-1966) of Deland, Florida, state recruiting secretary for the Y.M.C.A.
Passport photo of fellow Y.M.C.A. secretary William John Von Behren of Palm Beach, Florida, who after serving at Fort Oglethorpe and Fort Benning, Georgia, went to France in May 1919.
In early June, Dr. Loomis was sent to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina for a three-week training course for new Y.M.C.A. secretaries, where he received instruction in physical culture (health and fitness), general “Y” work, and Bible study. Then he headed to New York City, where the personnel board for the Y.M.C.A. War Work Council was located. On June 20, 1918, his application for a passport was received by the U.S. State Department, Harvey Geer (1855-1939), a real estate developer in West Palm Beach attesting to his identity. With the National War Work Council’s endorsement, and the War Department’s approval, his passport was issued. He sailed to France on an army transport in mid-July 1918. Once he arrived it is not known whether he was initially assigned or requested to serve with a Y.M.C.A. canteen or hut that was attached to 42nd (Rainbow) Division, the same unit in which his son Emerson served. But he was with that division when the 42nd marched through Luxemburg into Germany as part of the U.S. Army of Occupation in December 1918.
Passport application of Charles Loomis, 5’ 10” tall, gray hair and blue eyes, and a scar on the back of his right hand.
Y.M.C.A. endorsement and War Department, Military Intelligence Branch, approval.
The Y.M.C.A. among other welfare organizations in Occupied Germany, whose job was to provide wholesome entertainment for and to entertain the more than 250,000 doughboys stationed in the Rhineland, based in Coblentz.
Charles Loomis died during an influenza epidemic that hit the American Army of Occupation in January and February 1919. There were hundreds of deaths from the disease among the troops and most of them ultimately dying of pneumonia. He was taken to Evacuation Hospital No. 9 in Coblentz, where he died of lobar pneumonia on January 12, 1919. The next day he was buried in Grave 78, Section R, Plot 2 of the American Standard Cemetery outside Coblenz. The War Department in Washington, D.C., notified Lilly Loomis of her husband’s death by telegram on February 3, 1919.
On June 14, 1920, Dr. Loomis’s remains were disinterred, transported by train to Antwerp, Belgium, and loaded onboard the U.S.A.T. Princess Matoika for a return trip to the United States. Arriving at Hoboken, New Jersey, on July 21, nine days later his coffin was shipped to the National Cemetery in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, where he was reinterred.
U.S. Army Evacuation Hospital, No. 9, Coblenz, Germany.
Charles Loomis’s gravestone at Cypress Hills has the wrong year for his death, an error made by the U.S. Quartermaster General’s office.
Y.M.C.A. Service Card for Charles Loomis, Palm Beach, Florida.
Entry for Charles Loomis on Honor Roll of Y.M.C.A. workers who died overseas. Summary of World War Work of the American Y.M.C.A. (1920).