The Indiana Publisher

Mike Lungford Special to The Tribune-Star (Terre Haute) Years after he left a small Indiana farm to travel the world, Ernie Pyle wrote, "Anything was better than looking at the south end of a horse going north." The famous war correspon- dent, not known for exaggera- tion, may have been practicing just that when he mentioned his home place, for Pyle nostalgi- cally wrote of it for the rest of his too-short life. Now, the Vermillion County house in which he was born has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, an honor that surely the "Hoosier Vagabond," as Pyle called him- self during the years of the Great Depression, would most certainly have approved. Steve Key, President of the "Friends of Ernie Pyle," the hard-working organization that saved the house from demolition nearly a half-century ago and now maintains the wonderful Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, says of the recognition, "We are ecstatic over the official designation for his birthplace. This is national recognition of the importance of Ernie Pyle as a cultural figure in our nation's history. In 1945, he was so popu- lar that it was President Harry Truman who announced the sad news of his death to the coun- try." Pyle spent most of his life after his high school graduation in the air and on dusty American back roads and in the mud of European and Pacific battle- fields, returning home only for brief visits as he was headed somewhere else. A short stint in the Navy and a few years at Indiana University studying journalism seem to have whetted his appetite for adven- ture, but he didn't even stay in Bloomington long, leaving school a few months before earn- ing his degree to take his first real writing job with the LaPorte Herald Argus. And from there, well, he became Ernie Pyle. One of the most eloquent references he made of Indiana came after he'd learned his mother had died. It was 1941 and he was in dimly- lit London during the Blitz, and he wrote that in his mind he had stored pictures of her and his home: "I could see her on bitter winter days in the old familiar woolen hood, with her nose red from the cold, and wearing a man's ragged coat fastened with a horse-blanket pin… I could see her as she stood on the front porch, crying bravely, on that morning in 1918 when I, being youthful, said a tearless goodbye and climbed lightly into the neighbor's waiting buggy that was to take me out of her life… Pictures of a lifetime. Pictures of her worry and dis- tress, pictures of her in anger at fools or injustice, pictures of her in gaiety, pictures of her in pain. They were all as clear and vivid as if I were there again on the prairies where I was born." The shy, skinny kid from Vermillion County may have known early that the rich soil and simplicity of rural Indiana wasn't to be his destiny, yet, time and time again, and year after year, his home and his par- ents and that table-flat farmland became staples in his writing. Whether it be in his human inter- est Depression Era traveling col- umns for Scripps-Howard News Service, or as an embedded reporter from the front lines of the Second World War, it became obvious that the boy could be taken out of the country, but the country was never quite taken out of the boy. The rented farmhouse in which Pyle was born on August 3, 1900—then owned by farmer Sam Elder—was moved a few miles to the southern edge of Dana to begin a new life as the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site. An only child, Ernie lived in the house only a short time with his parents, Maria and William Pyle. "There was an old town called Toronto at the first inter- section south of US Highway 36 and Indiana 71," says Phil Hess, the vice-president of the Friends. "The Toronto settlement predated by decades the establishment of Dana in the 1870's. Ernie's birthplace on the Elder farm was about a mile west of Toronto. The family was there about 18 months after Ernie's birth, then moved permanently about a mile east of Toronto on the same road to the farm of Lambert Taylor, Ernie's grandfather on his mother's side. That house and all the farm buildings were removed probably a decade ago." Although Pyle eventually made a home for himself in the desert of New Mexico and is buried in Hawaii, he is still most associated with his Indiana roots. He reshaped American journal- ism and won the Pulitzer Prize and most certainly was the most- read writer in the world during the war years, but perhaps the best place to get a feel for him yet is just across the railroad tracks in Dana. "Being placed on the National Register will open the doors to potential grants down the line for preservation or renovation of the farmhouse, which was built in 1851. Grants and donations are vital for the Friends to be successful as an Page 4 October 2021 The Dana birthplace of famed Hoosier journalist Ernie Pyle is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Photo courtesy the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum. Historic Pyle birthplace has the feel of home Indiana journalist's family home placed on National Register "We hope this national recognition will give Hoosiers and others another reason to come and visit what we believe is a gem of a museum." — Steve Key president, Friends of Ernie Pyle Pyle See Pyle,page 10

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