Never forgotten: Research on Lorain man killed in World War II yields surprises for surviving family

LORAIN — Approximately 4,000 miles east of the International City is the town of Ospel in The Netherlands. Home to about 4,000 people and also a popular annual blues festival, in 1944 it was ground zero for a bloody battle between Axis and Allied armed forces in World War II. Nearly 80 years later, Oberlin couple Barb and Bob Smith spent a portion of a monthlong trip to Europe from mid-September through mid-October in Ospel. While traveling there, a mutual friend introduced them to Niek Hendrix. Hendrix has a "lovely collection of World War II memorabilia" in his small private museum, Barb Smith said. He took the American couple out for a sightseeing tour in his World War II-era Willys Jeep. Hendrix also showed them photos of a memorial his family dedicated to their American liberators in 2007, carved with the names of the 54 soldiers of the U.S. Army's 7th Armored Division soldiers known to have died to free Ospel from the Germans in late 1944. Barb Smith said she asked Hendrix to send her a list of all the names of the men carved on the memorial, especially those from Ohio. To her surprise, one was Pvt. John J. Gonas of Lorain, killed in action in 1944. There on the monument was a soldier who died 4,000 miles away from his home nearly 80 years ago, a native of the largest city in the county where Barb Smith worked as a special education teacher until she retired from the Elyria Schools nearly 10 years ago. A self-described "Army brat married to a sailor" — Bob Smith served on the aircraft carriers the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt and USS Intrepid during his Navy career in the late 1950s and early 1960s — Barb Smith said she took it upon herself to track down the Gonas family as soon as she got back to the U.S. on Oct. 12. The Netherlands, 1944 According to The U.S. 7th Armored Division Association website, the soldiers of what was known as the "Lucky 7th" saw the lengthiest combat of any non-airborne American troops in The Netherlands. Thirty-nine days of heavy fighting went on from Sept. 30 to Nov. 7, 1944, in what is sometimes known as the Battle of the Canals near the towns of Ospel, Meijel and Liesel. According to Liberation Route Europe, a transnational memorial trail that connects World War II memorials and remembrance sites across Europe, and other historical accounts, 24,000 German soldiers attacked American forces in the area on Oct. 27, 1944, capturing Ospel and Meijel but not Liesel. Scottish infantry and British armored reinforcements were rushed to the area, counterattacked and stopped the Germans in their tracks. American forces including the 7th Armored Division then retook Ospel in early November. The 7th Armored Division paid a heavy price: Fifty-four men were killed and 300 wounded in a single week. The dead included 33-year-old Pvt. John Gonas, killed when shrapnel hit him in the neck on Nov. 1, 1944, according to U.S. Army records. Local research Upon her return from Europe, Barb Smith's research quickly paid off with help from the Lorain Public Library and Lorain Historical Society. "Lorainite Killed in Holland: Pvt. Gonas Gives Life With Army Infantry; Another Wounded," read a small headline in The Lorain Journal on Nov. 16, 1944. The newspaper reported that Pvt. John Gonas joined the U.S. Army in April 1941, and after training at Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Knox in Kentucky, and then-Camp Polk in Louisiana, he shipped off to Europe in June 1944. The newspaper said he had worked at the Lorain Works of National Tube Co., and that he was survived by his wife, Margaret Grace Gonas, a machine operator at the Lorain Works, and their daughter Martha Ann, 3. The family lived in the 3300 block of Reid Avenue at the time. Other survivors were Pvt. John Gonas' parents, John Sr. and Mary (Botchik); two brothers serving in the Armed Forces — Albert Frank Gonas, a gunner's mate stationed in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, and Edward J. Gonas, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps stationed in England; a brother, George William Gonas; and their sister, Agnes. According to Barb Smith's research and U.S. Army records, Pvt. John Gonas was first buried in the U.S. Military Cemetery Henri-Chappelle in Hombourg, Belgium. In 1945, Mary Gonas wrote a letter to the U.S. War Department, asking for more information about her son's death, according to a copy contained in U.S. Army records that were later archived on the 7th Armored Division Association website. "I have many doubts in my mind and would like to have it settled to have a peace of mind," she wrote the War Department on July 14, 1945, according to a copy of the letter in her son's file. "Could you tell me more and as to where exactly he was buried. When the right time permits I would like to have his body moved to the States, if possible." Ptv. John Gonas' remains were disinterred in 1947 and returned to Ohio, and J.J. Gluvna and Son Memorial Chapel — now Gluvna-Shimo-Hromada Funeral Chapel — arranged for him to be buried in Calvary Cemetery. The files kept by the 7th Armored Division include a document where Margaret Grace Gonas — by then living in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, according to U.S. Army records — relinquished her rights to her late husband's remains to his mother. For unknown reasons, or perhaps because many of them have since died, few remaining members of Pvt. John Gonas' family apparently knew he had been buried in his hometown. Some even believed his body was still buried in Europe, alongside his brothers in arms who laid down their lives to stop the Nazi menace. Starting on Oct. 12, Barb Smith made it her mission to track down the Gonas family to honor their fallen relative in some way and let them know the Dutch people had not forgotten his sacrifice. She found Albert Gonas, the nephew of Pvt. John Gonas, living nearby. Now 79 years old, he and his wife split their time between Amherst and Sarasota, Florida. Albert Gonas said he didn't know his late uncle, who died the year after he was born, was buried in Ohio. The family thought he had been laid to rest in Pennsylvania with his wife's family, he said. A graveside tribute On Thursday morning, Barb and Bob Smith, their friends Craig and Gayle Hignett, Albert Gonas and state Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, gathered at Calvary Cemetery on North Ridge Road in Lorain for a short ceremony Barb Smith put together to honor Pvt. John Gonas. Small American flags were placed next to his grave and that of his brother Albert Frank Gonas — who was buried there following his death from a car crash in 1946 only about a month after he returned home from the war. Barb Smith sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and blessed the American-Dutch alliance kept alive by the Hendrixes. In comments he shared with Barb Smith that she read out loud at the graveside ceremony, Hendrix said his father Harry was 17 when Ospel was liberated by the 7th Armored Division. Most of the houses in Ospel were damaged, destroyed by artillery or burned by the German army, though the Hendrix family's farmhouse survived an attempted arson. Hendrix and his family have long remembered the sacrifice of the American soldiers from Ohio, New York, Tennessee, Illinois, New Jersey and elsewhere who gave their lives to help liberate the Dutch — who themselves put up a fierce nonviolent resistance to the Nazis, hid many Jews and other persecuted people from the invaders, and spied for the Allies so they could hand over valuable intelligence. The 54 soldiers of the 7th Armored Division who died in a week of heavy fighting in and around the village "made the highest sacrifice for us," Hendrix wrote. "When I was 8 years old, my father told me: 'Never forget what these men did for us,'" he wrote. The Hendrix family didn't forget, dedicating their memorial to the 7th Armored Division in 2007 alongside some very special guests — surviving 7th Armored Division soldiers and family members of some of those who died in the fight for Ospel in 1944. "'Here we and all who shall hereafter live in freedom will be reminded that to these men and their comrades we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and with the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live,'" Hendrix wrote, sharing a postwar quote by U.S. Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and later 34th president of the United States. Barb Smith gifted Albert Gonas and Hendrix a pair of "Honor and Remember" flags, designed by a Virginia man whose son was killed in action in Fallujah, Iraq, in December 2005. (The Ohio House has passed legislation seeking to have that flag named an official symbol of remembrance for the state's fallen soldiers, though the matter has yet to make it to a vote in the Ohio Senate, Miller said.) Albert Gonas said he was "most grateful and thankful" to Hendrix and his family for honoring the men of the 7th Armored Division, including his uncle, "who gave their lives and paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect the innocent lives of those living in Ospel." "The monument is an honor to the fallen for their families and should be a reminder to the people of the United States of America," he said, also thanking Barb and Bob Smith "for their dedication to remembering our war heroes." Another ceremony, with a local veterans honor guard taking part, is scheduled at Calvary Cemetery, 555 North Ridge Road in Lorain, at 11 a.m. Monday, Barb Smith said. The search continues Pvt. John Gonas' father, John, died in 1974 and his mother, Mary, died in 1981. They are buried next to him and his brother Albert Frank Gonas, who survived three ship sinkings in the Pacific Theater before dying in a car crash in February 1946, his nephew and namesake said. Brother Edward J. Gonas, the U.S. Army Air Corps veteran, died in 2006. He and his wife, Mary, also are buried in Calvary Cemetery. Barb Smith said she was in contact with one of the couple's daughters. Their sister Agnes (Gonas) Schmetzer died at age 104 in 2014, according to her published obituary. Another brother, George William Gonas, died in 1981. His son, George Jr., was a resident of Vermilion and Lorain who died in 2020. George Gonas Jr.'s son George Gonas III is the great-nephew of Pvt. John Gonas and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel living in Watertown, New York. "It's a small world," he said in a phone interview Friday, talking about Barb Smith's discovery of his great-uncle's name on the Dutch monument. He said his father once told him that the night his great-uncle died in 1944, his grandfather had a nightmare and woke up screaming that "Johnny passed." George Gonas III said the similarities between his great-uncle and himself don't end there: He also trained at Fort Benning, Fort Knox and now-Fort Polk at the start of his Army career. Now retired, he works as civilian logistical support with the 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum, New York. Like his Uncle Albert, George Gonas III said he had no idea Pvt. John Gonas was buried in Lorain until Barb Smith contacted him. He had also heard that the war hero had been buried in Europe and his body never returned to American soil, he said. George Gonas III said he has a number of family photos and fond memories of "Uncle Eddie" — the late Edward J. Gonas — and his wife, who enjoyed his visits "and gave me extra spaghetti" when he visited the American Slovak Club in his Army uniform. Barb Smith said she would like to find Pvt. John and Margaret Grace Gonas' daughter Martha Ann, who would now be in her 80s and grew up in the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, area. George Gonas III said he'd once seen Martha Ann's Johnstown High School yearbook photo, but hadn't seen her or her children in person since his grandfather's funeral in 1981, when he wasn't yet a teenager. Martha Ann had three daughters, who would be close to George Gonas III in age, he said. He said he'd welcome a chance to meet up with that side of the family again after all this time. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaveOBrienCT.