September 16: Two Enlistments and a Land Purchase

On 16 September 1943, seventeen-year-old Renay Charles Heckman entered active service in the United States Navy at Philadelphia. His signed Pennsylvania World War II compensation application gives that date, and two Navy muster records repeat it with his exact service number, 246 02 57.

Renay trained as a signalman and attained the rating Signalman Third Class. A newly scanned muster-roll page records his transfer from the U.S. Naval Training School at Noroton Heights, Connecticut, to the Naval Armed Guard Center in South Brooklyn on 12 May 1944. The Armed Guard Center operated through Brooklyn's wartime naval facilities and prepared Navy personnel for duty aboard merchant ships. This independently confirms the Armed Guard portion of the family story.

Naval Armed Guard Center change reports associate Renay's exact service number with SS Santa Teresa on 29 November 1944, SS Fort Henry on 22 December 1944, and SS Cape Lilibeo in September 1945. These entries establish documented associations with the three merchant ships, although the packet does not by itself reconstruct every voyage, port, or period aboard each vessel.

USS Missouri muster rolls list Renay as Signalman Third Class, service number 246 02 57, received aboard on 28 December 1945. He remained on the ship's crew roll for the quarter ending 1 April 1946. The records therefore confirm that his late-war orders culminated in actual service aboard the battleship after Japan's surrender.

The record also preserves a small name story. He was born and baptized as Renay Charles Heckman. After the war he used Rene Charles Heckman in everyday and civil records, although he still signed the 1950 compensation application as Renay. No legal name change has been found.

Renay was honorably separated at Bainbridge, Maryland, on 16 May 1946. His documented World War II service makes his descendants eligible for membership in the Order of the Second World War Society. He later worked in television and set design. He died in Winter Garden, Florida, on 8 March 2004.

Robert J. Reding enlisted in the United States Army at Chicago on 16 September 1942. The National Archives-derived enlistment database records Army serial number 36 372 718, the rank of private, Cook County residence, Wisconsin birth in 1921, and civilian work as a semiskilled mechanic or repairman.

An exact-serial-number National Archives prisoner-of-war record confirms that Robert later held the rank of Staff Sergeant and was held by Germany in the European Theater. The record associates him with camp code 063, described as Stalag XII-A to IX-B, Limburg an der Lahn, Hessen-Nassau, Prussia. This administrative label appears to reflect movement from the Stalag XII-A transit camp at Limburg to Stalag IX-B at Bad Orb, but the electronic record does not provide the dates of his capture, arrival, transfer, liberation, or repatriation.

The POW record lists Robert's status as returned to military control, liberated, or repatriated. Its report date is 8 June 1945, but that date cannot yet be treated as his liberation date. His matching Army serial number makes the identification conclusive and confirms that Robert survived German captivity.

The database classifies Robert among selectees and records him as single without dependents at enlistment. He later married Felicia Riefski in Cook County on 17 June 1948. Felicia was Janet Riefski Heckman's sister, making Robert Charlie's uncle by marriage.

Robert and Felicia had two daughters, Susanne and Joanne. The enlistment and POW files establish the outline of Robert's wartime experience, but his unit, capture circumstances, camp chronology, duties, and separation remain worthwhile targets for his personnel file, German POW personnel cards, and Red Cross records.

On 16 September 1856, Anthony Hoover purchased a parcel of land from Sarah Ann Shuster in Perry Township, Clarion County, Pennsylvania. The recorded deed identifies both parties as residents of the township and gives the purchase price as $600.

The parcel contained four acres and 120 perches, equivalent to 4¾ acres. Recorded in Clarion County Deed Book 5, page 453, the conveyance was witnessed by David Gray and Elijah Keister. It gives us a specific place, price, and date for a transaction made 170 years ago.

This was part of a broader pattern of landholding. The county deed index records additional purchases by Anthony in 1857 and 1858, followed by a conveyance by Anthony and his wife to Harriet Kepler in 1865. Those entries provide a trail for reconstructing the property he held in Perry Township.

The land records also leave a question unanswered. The 1850 census reported $1,500 in real estate for Anthony, but the earliest acquisition found in the county grantee index is this 1856 purchase. We have not yet identified the land or interest represented by that earlier census valuation.

Anthony's daughter Sarah Hoover continued Charlie's direct line through Stella Hollobough, Ruth Alma Cunningham, and Renay Charles Heckman. The deed helps place Anthony in the community, but it does not name his parents or establish his still-unproved father's identity.