SEAGRAVES: Remembering the fallen 

Published 1:37 pm Tuesday, July 22, 2025

One of the greatest things about the job I have taken in retirement is the opportunities I have to read the stories of people who have gone before.  Invariably I will be looking at a person or some event that is related to the history of Georgia Military College and I will find myself in the rabbit hole digging deeper and deeper. Months ago, I began looking at GMC alumni who perished during World War I. This led me to finding the number of alumni who died during World War II and then to the number who served and those who served as officers.   Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,035 alumni served during World War II and 222 (over 10%)of those were officers.

I began looking at where our war dead are buried, and as you might suspect quite a few are buried in Baldwin County with the bulk buried in Memory Hill and Westview cemeteries.  I have had the opportunity to honor our dead by marking their graves in Memory Hill and will soon do the same in Westview, Black Springs Baptist Church Cemetery and other smaller ones scattered about.

During this quest I was informed that the school is being offered paintings by Wilbur Kurtz. If you are like me you don’t know Kurtz, but I soon did! I made a trip to Stone Mountain to see the paintings (did I mention they are huge 8 feet by 10 feet?)  Last week, I made another trip to Stone Mountain to meet with the folks from Conservation Lab out of South Carolina to determine if the paintings can be moved and installed safely. At the front end of the trip, I stopped in Monticello, Georgia where two GMC Alumni are buried. Sgt. Paul B. Minter was a 1915 graduate of Georgia Military College who was a member of the American Expeditionary Force, Company B (Macon Volunteers), 151st Machine Gun Battalion. He was killed in action at Chateau Thierry on July 26, 1918, when he drew sniper fire on himself in order for others to locate a sniper who was picking off his comrades. For this action, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Originally buried in France, Sgt. Minter was disinterred and reburied with full military honors in his hometown of Monticello at Westview Cemetery in 1922. He was one of four alumni who died in France during the Great War. The other three are James Franklin Little — died in the Argonne Forest and reinterred in Memory Hill,  Thomas Howard Huff — died somewhere in France and reinterred in the Huff Family Cemetery in Coopers and William Singleton Morris — Picardie, France, buried in the Oise, Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial.

Private Lucius S. Kelly Jr., GMC Class of 1914,  was a late entry into World War I and never saw action. Like millions of others worldwide he contracted the Spanish Flu.  Pvt. Kelly  died of pneumonia in Winchester, England just five days before the cession of hostilities and was originally buried there. He was disinterred from his grave in Winchester and reburied in Westview Cemetery in Monticello in 1920. Others who died of disease or accident are Eddie Brown, Fleming duBignon Vaughan and Morris Vinson (Memory HIll), John Coffee (Marshallville), Isaac Newton Maxwell (Danville Cemetery in Twiggs County) and Ryan McCune Williamson (Arlington National Cemetery). 

I was reminded of the importance of remembering the dead when I talked to Mr. Phillip Jordan at Jordan Funeral Home in Monticello. He had no idea that Sgt. Minter was buried in his cemetery but was quick to help and located the graves of Kelly and Minter. He called me Friday afternoon to let me know that the local VFW had been informed and they had visited on Friday morning and marked Minter’s grave with a VFW marker. No family, no one to remember his sacrifice, no one to lay a flower, a wreath or a flag.  That has become my reason for marking our alumni veteran graves with a GMC unit crest.  That they will never be forgotten.

—Scott Seagraves is a retired GMC Prep educator. His column appears occasionally in The Union-Recorder.