'Darnedest Stubborn Person'

Bobby Moore feared that the grief and loneliness, and the drinking, that followed Dorothy's and Nancy's deaths would kill his father, too. Like the German officer who advised a gritty American major to surrender on Djebel Lessouda, Bobby underestimated Bob Moore.

He grieved. He hurt. Everyone who knew him could see the pain. And he soldiered on.

Moore found comfort in his son, his grandchildren, his faith, his community. He traveled to Ireland to visit his ancestral home with Bobby and his wife, Lynn, and to the Black Hills and the Amana Colonies with Mrs. Parnacott and her family.

He lived to see his first great-grandchild, Christopher Parnacott.

Mrs. Parnacott grew especially close toward the end. "It's like he was trying to make up for lost time that he didn't have with Mom," she said.

Though slowed to a limp by back and ankle injuries from the war, Moore played golf, nearly to the end. In his 80s, he shuffled around Red Oak's links almost daily with Tom Moates, who was in his 90s. When their legs could no longer carry them around the course, Boylan, the funeral director, loaned them his golf cart.

"Once they got the golf cart," Boylan said, "they were just like a couple kids."

Moore grew reflective in his final years. The Rev. Sandra Wainwright, pastor of Villisca's Presbyterian Church, visited frequently.

"He just seemed to want to talk," Rev. Wainwright said. "I think as people get older, they can look back and start summarizing their life."

In a paradox of sorts, Moore seemed in his talks with the pastor to be yearning for understanding beyond his military persona. "People kept putting him in a role of a war hero," Rev. Wainwright said. "For someone who's always put on a pedestal, it's hard to come down and be a regular human being."

Moore didn't place himself on a pedestal. He was unpretentious and didn't make himself the hero of his stories. But the military was for decades his favorite topic for discussion, so it took little effort for others to elevate him to the pedestal.

He was still "General Moore" to lots of folks in Villisca and Red Oak, proudly claimed by both of his hometowns. He helped organize a Court of Honor that flies flags for veterans' funerals at the Red Oak cemetery on Memorial Day. He served on local and state advisory committees for the National Guard and fought successfully to keep the Guard unit in Red Oak. He helped lead a campaign to reactivate the 34th Division, of which Company F had been a part.

"Till the day he died, he was always spit and polish," Jim Watt said.

He also kept his boyish spirit. At his granddaughter's wedding in 1988, the old general entertained children by inhaling helium from balloons and speaking in a high-pitched voice.

Another war in another desert gave Moore another moment in the sun, almost half a century after he had gone to Africa. He took a position of honor in the community sendoff as Red Oak's Guard unit, the 1168th Transportation Company, headed off to fight in the Persian Gulf in December 1990.

During that war, on Feb. 10, 1991, the 34th Division was reactivated, 50 years to the day after it was mobilized for World War II. The assembled crowd at the Villisca armory sang happy birthday to the aging commander, just eight days shy of his 86th birthday. He pinned the division's "Red Bull" patch onto its new commander, Capt. David Lindberg.

Then guardsmen past and present retraced the steps of Moore's troops a half-century earlier to the site where the depot once stood.

Moore told Bobby the ceremony was the greatest day of his life.

His health declined quickly. Shortly after the ceremony, he was hospitalized for a few weeks. Not long after he got out of the hospital, his longtime friend Rex Holmes, a retired Marine veteran, found Moore on his bedroom floor, disabled by a stroke. He was taken to the hospital, then transferred to the Villisca Good Samaritan Center.

He never spoke again.

He could move his left hand and would squeeze Rev. Wainwright's hand to show he understood. He would open his hand to answer yes to a question. With smiles, squeezes and small movements of his hand, Moore managed to communicate, even to maintain his personality.

"In a pleasant, intriguing way," the pastor said, "he was the darnedest stubborn person."

She remembers reading golf stories to Moore the morning he died, April 18, 1991.

Mourners filled the Presbyterian Church in Villisca for the funeral, the right side filled with comrades in their military uniforms. They sang "Amazing Grace," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

Don Patton, the soldier Moore had admonished a half-century earlier for not writing home, gave the eulogy.

An honor guard from Offutt Air Force Base provided a 21-gun salute at the cemetery, where Moore was buried between his wife and parents, 80 yards uphill from Nancy's grave and just in front of the long headstone for the six Moores who were slain with the infamous ax.

Jets from Offutt paid tribute in a flyby, Rev. Wainwright recalled. "If you were trying not to cry, that just did it. Forget it."

Downtown, just a block from where the Moore Bros. drugstore used to stand, the marquee at the Rialto theater proclaimed, "Farewell General Robert Moore."

Outside the Presbyterian Church, the message board quoted one of World War II's most famed generals, Douglas MacArthur: "Old soldiers never die."

Photo Won Pulitzer Prize

"The Homecoming," a 1943 photograph by Earle "Buddy" Bunker of the World-Herald, won a Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most famous pictures from World War II. In 1956, Kodak selected it as the best human interest flash photo of the previous quarter-century. Bunker shot the picture, shown above, at the train depot in Villisca, Ia., as Lt. Col. Robert Moore returned from combat in North Africa. The photo shows Moore hugging his daughter, Nancy, as his wife, Dorothy and nephew, Michael Croxdale, watch. ...

Buddy Bunker, World-Herald Photographer

Earle "Buddy" Bunker barely snapped his classic homecoming picture.

Cameras didn't come with motor drives in 1943, or even with a crank that advanced film with a quick flip of the thumb. Electronic flashes were off in the Buck Rogers future somewhere.

Bunker was lugging a Speed Graphic camera, with an attached arm for holding flash bulbs, as he waited at the Villisca train depot for Lt. Col. Robert Moore to return home from World War II.

The nine-pound camera included a holder for two 3 1/2-by-5-inch sheets of film. After taking the first shot, the photographer had to insert an opaque slide that protected the film from light, remove the holder, turn it around for the second shot and remove the slide protecting the second sheet of film. Then he had to cock the shutter and fire again. And that was if the picture was already focused. Even a swift, seasoned photographer needed several seconds to prepare for the next shot. And, if he was using a flash, as Bunker was, he had to pop out the old bulb and insert a new one.

Bunker snapped his camera as Moore stepped off the train. The flash bulb didn't fire. Muttering under his breath, Bunker popped in a new bulb and flipped the film holder around for the second shot. He finished reloading and snapped the shutter just as Moore embraced his excited daughter, Nancy.

Standing next to Bunker was J. Harold Cowan, a World-Herald reporter who also used a Speed Graphic, because he frequently traveled without a photographer. He fired his camera at the same instant.

After shooting other pictures as Moore visited with townspeople, Bunker and Cowan hurried back to Omaha to make their deadline for the evening paper. Each had captured the welcoming hug, but Bunker's picture was sharper, perfectly focused.

"I think I was probably shaking just a little," said Cowan, now 87 and retired.

Some have speculated through the years that the photo was staged, noting that the train in the background was a freight train. The subsequent, clearly spontaneous, pictures make that appear doubtful. In one of them, Bunker had stepped back farther and shifted his angle, showing the full depot platform, a freight train on the left and passenger train to the right.

The picture was republished widely, winning Bunker the 1944 Pulitzer Prize. It also was honored by Kodak in 1956 as the best human interest flash photograph of the previous 25 years. It was the pinnacle of Bunker's distinguished 38-year career at The World-Herald. He died of a heart attack in 1975 at age 62.

Cowan was glad for the fame that came to his colleague. "I goofed and he didn't," he said. "He was a good friend and I was very happy that he got it. I didn't have the faintest bit of jealousy."

Moore displayed a framed copy of the photograph in his home, as did other family members. "The very first time I met Bob he had to show me that picture," said Jan Castle Renander, editor of the Red Oak Express.

Michael Croxdale, the little boy in the picture, grew up to be a doctor and had a copy hanging in his waiting room.

Linked by the famous photo, the Moores and Bunker became friends. Robert Moore Jr. remembers his parents visiting Bunker in Omaha in the 1960s.

Moore was prone, though, to downplay the picture if others were making too big a deal of it. Longtime friend Rex Holmes of Red Oak remembers Moore saying, "That guy just got a lucky shot."

Luck or not, the picture's appeal was enduring. It was published time and again in books and magazines and brochures. Moore's children and grandchildren found the photo in their history books. Debbie Parnacott, Nancy's daughter, studied it in a photography class in college. Serving in Vietnam brought Moore's son a deeper understanding of the photo. "At first the picture was just a matter of pride," the younger Moore wrote to Bunker in 1973. "But now, having been to war myself and returning to my loved ones, there is something in the picture that gives it a deeper meaning , something I can't explain, but feel. Perhaps I can relate to my Dad's feelings at that moment. Whatever it is, I do know that 'The Homecoming' means more to me - it's a classic."

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