As Memorial Day nears, we profile three Rochester alumni who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Almost since the University of Rochester was founded in 1850, there have been students, faculty, and staff have who have lost their lives while serving in the US Armed Forces. The legacies of those who died are etched across the River Campus as lasting tributes:
- Hirst Lounge in Wilson Commons features memorial plaques listing the names of fallen soldiers dating to the Civil War, which began just 11 years after the University opened.
- The Veteran Memorial Grove, located near the stairs leading up to Wilson Quadrangle, honors University alumni killed in wartime since World War I.
- In Morey Hall, the University’s NROTC offices feature the Victor Ohanesian Midshipmen Training Room and the Thomas King ’66 Wardroom. Ohanesian was an assistant professor of naval science, and King was a student-athlete and NROTC battalion commander. Both were killed in the Vietnam War.
In recognition of Memorial Day, we offer profiles of three members of the University community who lost their lives in war.
Jacob Thomas Farris ’41M (Res)
World War II
The son of a doctor, Farris grew up in Kentucky and earned his bachelor’s degree at Eastern Kentucky University. He came to Rochester’s Strong Memorial Hospital as a medical intern in 1939 and was a resident there until joining the Army as a medical reserve in 1941.
Farris was attached to a combat battalion and already had received the Silver Star, the US Armed Forces’ third highest military decoration for valor in combat, when he landed with troops during the Allies’ D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. Nearly two months later, on August 3, Farris died of shrapnel wounds while tending to the wounded in the field at Normandy. He was 27.
His wife, Margaret Stebbins Farris ’39, ’40N, had given birth to a daughter three months earlier and received news of her husband’s death in a letter from a physician who was working alongside Farris on the front lines.
Farris is buried in Richmond, Kentucky. The inscription on his tombstone, written by his young widow, reads:
I will love you forever, Sweetheart. Time and distance mean nothing.
Living he made it goodlier to live.
Dying he made it easier to die.
Margaret Farris stayed in Rochester and enjoyed a long career as a teacher and principal in the Rochester City School District. She never remarried and died at age 93 in 2012—68 years after her husband.
Earl Krumwiede ’46E
World War II
Krumwiede grew up in Rochester and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School, where he played viola in the school orchestra. He received his preliminary musical education at the Hochstein School of Music & Dance and attended Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, for a year before entering the Eastman School of Music as a viola and composition major.
The son of a Lutheran minister, he was drafted into the Army in February 1943. He went missing that November when the troop ship he was on, the HMT Rohna, was sunk in the Mediterranean Sea by a German glide bomb off the coast of Tunisia. It wasn’t until June 1944 that Krumwiede was confirmed among the 1,105 American service members who died in the attack. It was the nation’s greatest loss at sea by enemy action during World War II.
Krumwiede’s date of death is listed as November 27, 1943. He was 21 years old and is buried with several fellow service members in the North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Tunisia.
James Morse ’68
Vietnam War
Morse was born in 1946 and grew up in South Kortright, a hamlet in Delaware County, New York. In high school, he served as junior class treasurer and senior class vice president and was a member of the yearbook staff and the school band. He enrolled at the University in the fall of 1964 and majored in management science. While at Rochester, he was a member of the University Chorus, the Chapel Choir, and the Men’s Glee Club.
Morse joined the Army on July 18, 1967, and left for Vietnam five months later, serving with the 5th Cavalry of the 9th Regiment. He was killed during a battle in the province of Quang Tri on March 30, 1968. He was the 17th resident of Delaware County to die in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1967.
Morse was 22 when he died. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and promoted from private first class to corporal. He is buried in Locust Hill Cemetery in Hobart, a village in Delaware County.
We remember
Read more profiles of University community members who lost their lives serving in the armed forces.
Jeremiah Drake, Class of 1852
Sylvanus Wilcox, Class of 1860
Charles Savage, Class of 1861
Lawrence Atkins, Class of 1915
Leon Buckler, Class of 1917
Robert Dennison, Class of 1919
Guy Barstow Fraley, Class of 1920
Gordon K. Lambert ’32, ’35 (MD)
Philip Carey ’39
Darwin K. Dunning ’39
Robert Zwierschke ’39
Victor Ohanesian
Walter Menegazzi ’43
Charles Langtry ’45
Bjorn Lindboe ’45
Robert E. Claudius ’46
Bruce Beghold ’47
Lester Shade ’47
Spiro J. Peters ’50
George Dykema Jr. ’51
James R. Dennison ’56
Gary Hopps ’61
Donald Thompson ’62
Edward Romig ’63
Thomas King ’66
Robert N. Funk ’67
Armour David Wilcox III ’68
