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Members
Links to External Sites
Head Doughboy Searcher:
Earl Goldsmith
Doughboy Searcher:
Harlan Ogle
Sumter County GA Archivist:
Alan Anderson
Mailing List:
Tommy Bruhn
Rudy Dichtl
Larry Hartsock
Michael McLane
Kathie & Bill Plack
Glenn Smith
Editor and Webmaster:
Les Kopel
"So Closes the Book, the Story Ends"
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Viquesney's last piece, Comrades, depicting a WWI Doughboy greeting his WWII GI counterpart.
Photo by Harlan Ogle, Monticello, KY.
Viquesney's second wife, Betty [Sadler], whose loss was too much for him to bear.
Photo: Indianapolis Star, Feb. 11, 1940.
With the death of his second wife, Betty, on August 21, 1946, just 16 days after his 70th birthday, Viquesney felt he had been dealt a mortal blow. He committed suicide on October 4, 1946, one day after the anniversary of the death of his first wife, Cora. The obituary below contains a "life history" written by Viquesney himself, which he had arranged to be delivered to the local newspaper. In it, he claims "nearly 870" Doughboy memorials, and thought his new "Spirit of the Fighting Yank" would "treble" that number, numbers that are impossibly high in light of the ones that have been found. Viquesney also maintained that every statue he ever made bore the name of his beloved hometown of Spencer, Indiana, apparently forgetting the many Doughboys he made that bear the name of Americus, GA, including the very first one that assured his fame, which still stands today in Nashvile, GA.
E. M. Viquesney's self-written obituary.
