Guy

 

Ethel, Guy and David C. Hankins. Thorntown, Indiana.

The fourth member of the group on that amazing 1937 California road trip was Guy Hankins, a cousin of my Gumpy and his brother Bob through their great-grandaunt Minnie Melissa Armstrong. Minnie was a daughter of Easter Vail Armstrong (my 3rd-great-grandmother). He was born in June 1921 in Thorntown, Indiana, about eight months younger than my Gumpy.

I know there are living descendants of Guy out there, and I am sharing these photos and starting his story with this post. Perhaps they've never seen these photos. I likely have more once I search through what might remain from the nine rolls of photos the group took in their two week road trip to California and back.

Keith Jones and Guy Hankins.

Guy was a reserve guard on the 1937 Thorntown High School basketball team. In 1938, he was a member of the Glee Club, and he graduated from Thorntown in 1939. In the 1940 US Census, Guy's father David was a barber, and Guy was a clerk in a grocery store in Thorntown along with his older sister Pearl. With the start of World War II, Guy took a job in the Hoosier Ordnance Plant, otherwise known as the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant in Charlestown, Indiana. The plant opened in 1941, and employed over 27,000 people by May 1941.

Guy signed a draft card in February 1942, listing the plant as his employer. Sometime after signing the draft card, Guy became a supervisor in the plant.

WWII Draft Card. Source: Ancestry.

Guy enlisted in the Army in July 1942, and it appears he was moved over to the Air Corps. He trained in the US, and then moved over to England in August 1944. My next post will pick up the story of Guy and his service in Europe during the war.