RITES HELD MONDAY FOR DARLEY DUNN

(veteran)

Funeral services were held today (Monday) at the Bendorf Funeral Home for Darley Dunn, 78 years of age, of Blair, who died Wednesday at Veterans Hospital in Omaha.

The Rev. Rex Bear officiated with interment in Blair Cemetery.

Mr. Dunn is survived by a brother, Wally Dunn, of Blair.

Pallbearers were Hap Stricklett, Sam Haller, Early Hardy, Everett Lamb, Martin Kuhr, Jr., and Elmer Anderson.

The VFW was in charge of graveside services with Jack Rembold playing taps.

Pilot Tribune 17 May 1951

After 53 Years, Darley Dunn Revisits Home Town

Has Blair changed much in appearance in recent years? Yes, agree even the people who live here.

But how much do you think Blair has changed in looks since 1898?

The answer came Friday when Darley P. Dunn came back to Blair.

Darley Dunn, then a youngster 17 years old, left Blair when the Spanish-American War started some 53 years ago. He was a volunteer, with his parents’ consent, and belonged to the 32nd Volunteer Infantry which went to the Philippines and which numbered quite a few Blairites.

Friday, for the first time since that fateful day in 1898, Darley Dunn, 70, came back to Blair. He dropped in at the Pilot-Tribune office to meet an old friend, Printing Foreman Bill Strode, who is also 70 years old, and from Mr. Strode he obtained the names of several of his former companions in arms, among them “Shorty” Mundorf and Andrew Beck.

Yes, Mr. Dunn agreed. Blair has changed in a big way during the past 53 years. Paving on the streets, the absence of trees downtown, a city twice the size of that he left as a youth – and, of course, the many changes in faces along the street.

But still it was home, and Darley Dunn said at The Pilot-Tribune office that he still recognized Blair as more or less the Blair he left behind as a youngster.

After the Spanish-American War, Dunn was in the Philippines insurrection. Then he joined the Manila police force. Still later the former Blairite enlisted in the 14th U.S. Cavalry, and in 1905 was discharged on Minandoa Island, in the Philippines. But he continued to live there – he was a resident of the Philippines for 46 years altogether. In 1942 he was made a prisoner by the invading Japanese and was sent to Santa Tomas prison camp, not to be liberated until three years and two months later.

He now lives at Otterville, Mo. While in Blair Friday, Mr. Dun looked up Gifford Dixon, Jr., of Blair, who is young enough to be his grandson but who also was a prisoner of the Japanese during the late war.

Note: Buried in Blair Cemetery, Blk 14 Lot 8 Gr 12. Born Feb. 19, 1882. Find a Grave #114363894.

~~~ Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska.~~~