Birthday Greetings to Dwight "Hoolie" Custer
in honor of his 94th birthday on Thursday, May 22, 2008

His Motto

"Hard Work, Clean Living and Self-Denial"

Editor's Note: The following biography of Dwight "Hoolie" Custer was written by his great nephew, Clayton Custer, son of Tom and Kathy (Smalley) Custer (both Parkway graduates.  Completed in 2004 for a school writing project, he tells the wonderful story of Dwight's life and honors his many accomplishments. Above is the author (third from left) on a golf outing at Deerfield Golf Course Rockford.

See more editor's notes on Hoolie's life at the end of this biography!

 

Hoolie
by Clayton Custer

Dwight Lyman Custer, more commonly known as Hoolie, has lived his life to the fullest.  Dwight, growing up and living in the small town of Rockford, Ohio, found enjoyment in his favorite hobbies of hunting, golfing, and fishing.  He helped his family survive the Great Depression and also served his country in the Thirty-Seventh Infantry during World War II.  His life is full of interesting stories of him as a youth and of perseverance.

Dwight got his nickname of Hoolie from a newspaper comic character in the 1920s known as the “Happy Hooligan.”  The comic character was a good-hearted hobo, with rags for clothing and a tin cap for a hat.  One day while playing baseball with his friends, Dwight received the comic book character’s name.  He was up at bat and one of his buddies on the other team, Jason Adams, started chanting, “ Happy Hooligan is at bat.”  Soon, the rest of the team was saying the chant.  All through high school he was known as Hooligan, and later on in life his nickname was shortened to Hoolie.

Hoolie was born on May 22, 1914, the third of his parents Franklin and Della Mae Custer’s six children.  He had one older sister Pauline and an older brother Dutch.  Hoolie’s three younger siblings were named Irene, Lorraine, and James.

Hoolie grew up in a time much different than today.  His father’s job as a Stationary Engineer at Rockford Electric Lighting Company was the family’s only source of income. Hoolie’s pants were made by his mother’s hands from a nine-yard bolt of denim.  In the summertime, the family’s evening entertainment was conversation found on the neighbor’s front porch.  In the wintertime, the family’s evening entertainment was found in conversation with neighbors around a coal-burning stove.  To help put food on the table, Hoolie and his siblings tended to the garden behind the family’s home in Rockford.

As a child, Hoolie had a few pets, one of them being a crow named Jim.  He was given the bird by his next-door neighbors who had grown tired of it.   Hoolie soon learned why his neighbors had so eagerly given him the pet crow.  Jim was attracted to shiny objects. One day while Hoolie was working on his bike, Jim stole some of the bicycle’s shiny nuts.  On another occasion, the pet crow stole some of Hoolie’s shiny money, which was later found on a woodpile behind his house.  He passed the mischievous bird on to someone else for fifty cents.   

During his childhood years, Hoolie ran around with a group of friends known as the “River Rats.”  The boys seemed to be obsessed with the St. Mary’s River.  Growing up well before the time of television or Nintendo, the boys often spent time fishing off the banks of the river, hunting the wooded areas along the water, and anything else the young boys could do to entertain themselves.

The boys picked up the nickname of River Rats from their schoolteacher.  She gave Hoolie and his friends the name after one boy, Carl Thompson, got an ear infection from playing down by the river.  One day in the winter, they cut a block of ice out of the St Mary’s River with axes and carried it up on the shore. The boys proceeded to slide across the ice.  Carl ran on the ice barefoot and soon got the ear infection.

For one week during the summer before Hoolie’s junior year in high school, he and fellow River Rat Davy Camel went on a voyage down the St. Mary’s River to a town called Mendon.  The two took Davy’s green rowboat, a piece of canvas, and a twenty-two rifle.  The two River Rats lived off the land, eating squirrels, robin’s breasts, and corn from farmer’s fields along the river.  The adventure had to be ended before making it to Mendon, because Davy got sick after getting bit on the finger by something in the water.  After returning home, Davy got better; the two often talked about how much fun they had on their tri

Hoolie in his teens was one of Rockford’s top athletes.  While attending Rockford High School, Hoolie earned varsity letters in football, basketball and baseball.  The sport he was most known for was football.  In high school Hoolie served as the football team’s star fullback, earning three varsity letters.  During his sophomore year, he enjoyed having his older brother Dutch and his friend Wilford Stover as linemen and their team had an undefeated season.

While Hoolie did enjoy childhood, it was not a bed of roses.  In October of 1929, the Stock Market crashed, bringing with it the Great Depression.  Soon, the whole country, including Rockford, would enter into the Great Depression.  The Custer family entered into a time of uncertainty.  Like most people who lived in town, it was hard for Hoolie’s family to get food or jobs to make money.  To make things even worse, Hoolie’s parents divorced in these dire times.

After the divorce, Hoolie, his mother, and his three younger siblings moved in with their grandmother who also lived in Rockford.  Hoolie’s father moved to another town and the family ceased to have his income.  Hoolie’s older siblings, Dutch and Pauline, moved out on their own and were not around to help the family.

To take care of the family, Hoolie, along with his younger brother Jim, would put meat on the table by hunting and fishing.  Hoolie also often found work on farms, picking fruit and bailing hay for a dollar a day.  His younger sister Irene quit school to get a job as a waitress, to help provide for the family.  It was a hard time for everyone, but even harder for a broken family.

The day after Hoolie graduated from Rockford High School he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  The CCC was one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most successful New Deal programs.  The CCC gave young unemployed men a job during the Great Depression, while helping to maintain the country’s national resources. The men earned a paycheck that was sent home to help their families.  These men experienced a work program that was run very much like the U.S. Army.

Hoolie was sent out to CCC Camp 594, in northern California.  During Hoolie’s eighteen months at the camp, he helped build two suspension bridges, build fire access roads, and construct buildings to store fire-fighting equipment.  He also served on a surveying crew working for the Northern Pacific Railroad.

The eight AM to five PM day was filled with backbreaking work.  Many times getting to the work area required the men to hike several miles through the rough mountain terrain.  Hoolie and his fellow laborers often had to bust through huge rocks with sledgehammers to make way for the fire access roads.  Huge timber also had to be cut out with two-man crosscut saws.  They did not have the aid of labor saving jackhammers or chain saws.

Hoolie’s CCC camp experience was not all hard work.  If the men passed the section leader’s inspection of their barracks, they received a weekend pass.  Just as long as the men were back Monday morning for work, they could do whatever they wanted.  Many times, Dwight and his peers ventured into the nearby town of Castella on their weekends off.  In the town, the men would watch picture shows and listen to traveling bands at the town’s pavilion. They could also obtain food from the Mess Sergeant and hike into the wilderness.  On one of these adventures, Hoolie and a few of friends climbed near by Mount Shasta.  On one weekend pass, they also ventured to the Pacific Ocean, to take their first swim in the Pacific Ocean.  The weekend pass proved to be well worth a week’s worth of strenuous labor.  

In 1936, Hoolie’s eighteen-month term in the CCC ended and he returned to Rockford.  The town had improved some since his leaving, but was still hurting from the Great Depression.  He was able to find work in the near by town of Celina at the Mersman’s Furniture Factory.  Hoolie got his social security card while working at Mersemen’s.  In November, Mersemen’s normally laid off many of their employees.  This did not bother Hoolie, because he always saved his money for the hard times.  He was happy to be laid off, with the approach of hunting season.  He had all the time in the world to trap muskrats and hunt game down by the river.

Hoolie made his living working odd jobs for the next few years.  He helped construct a bridge north of Rockford under the U.S. Government WPA program.  Other jobs included bailing hay for local farmers, and he even reentered the CCC program for six months under his older brother Dutch’s name.  Hoolie would soon find steady employment.

On October 15, 1940, not wanting to be drafted, Hoolie and his best friend Carl Thompson enlisted in the Army National Guard.  Soon the two men were sent to Camp Shelby Indiana for Basic Training.  Dwight, Carl, and the rest of the trainees experienced traditional basic training with Drill Sergeants’ hazing, long marches, and the meticulous cleaning of equipment.  With the country still reeling from the Great Depression, the soldiers in training drilled with broomsticks for guns and wood burning stoves pipes for mortars. The men eventually graduated basic training and were a part of the 37^th Infantry.

Hoolie had high-test scores on his Military Aptitude tests, and was promoted to Corporal right after basic training.  Six months later still stationed at Camp Shelby and training to be a medic in the 37^th Division’s Third Battalion, Corporal Custer was promoted to Sergeant.  Later on in his military career, Hoolie would very quickly become Staff Sergeant and finally First Sergeant.  As a First Sergeant in the Third Battalion’s Medical Detachment, Hoolie was responsible for forty men. 

In 1942, after training for a year and a half, the 37^th Division traveled by train to the Pacific Theater’s staging area in San Francisco.  From there, the Division was shipped to the island chain of Fiji for training exercises.   Hoolie had the privilege to make the voyage to Fiji on the cruise liner President Coolidge.  The luxurious ship had a swimming pool and dancing halls that the soldiers could enjoy.

After arriving at one of Fiji’s enchanting tropical islands, Hoolie and the rest of his men spent little time on the island’s majestic beaches. The Third Battalion, along with the rest of the 37^th Division, drilled repeatedly for their upcoming invasion of the Solomon Islands.  The men kept themselves in excellent physical condition with a twenty- mile hike almost every day, and they did push-ups until they could do no more.  Hoolie and his fellow medics spent time practicing their life saving skills.  Just like in basic training, they still meticulously cleaned their equipment.

Six months after arriving at Fiji, the 37^th division headed for the Japanese-occupied Island of New Georgia.  On July 4, 1932, under the cover of battleship cannons, landing crafts carrying an American invasion force landed on the island’s beaches.  One of those landing crafts carried Hoolie; who was about to get his first taste of combat.

The conflict on New Georgia was only supposed to take a month.  It took American Forces over two months to accomplish their objective.  During that time without mentioning the hardships imposed by enemy forces, Hoolie would go three weeks without a bath, three days without food, and never had toothpaste to brush his teeth.  By the end of the two months of fighting on New Georgia, Hoolie’s uniform had rotted off his body.  Even worse, Hoolie lost his best friend, Private First Class Carl Thompson, on this island to enemy fire.  But Hoolie overcame all this and made sure the medics under his command had the supplies they needed to save lives.

After New Georgia, Hoolie and the rest of the medical detachment helped reinforce a Marine Raider Expeditionary Force at one of World War II’s most famous battles, Guadal Canal.  Hoolie also helped bolster defenses on the island of Bougainville.  He missed out on being in the landing invasion force of the Philippines due to a two-week furlough.  However, he spent the remainder of the war in the Philippines. 

While at home on furlough from the war, Hoolie noticed how things had changed for the war effort.  In almost every yard in town there was a Victory Garden to help conserve food. Everyone that was previously unemployed in the small town had a job building something for the war effort.  People were forced to ration fuel, building materials, and anything else that was useful to help win the war.  Not only Rockford, but also the rest of the country was able to defeat the Great Depression.  The people back home in the United States were the ones that won World War II, giving the Military what they needed.  

Hoolie received an honorable discharge from the military on October 5, 1945, at Indian Town Gap in Pennsylvania.  Almost five years after joining the National Guard with his best friend Carl Thompson, Hoolie was going home.  Throughout Hoolie’s time in the Army, he had been sending the majority of his paychecks home to take care of his mother and for the purchase of a house in Rockford.  After returning home in October of 1945, Hoolie slept for the first time in his new home at 609 West Columbia Street in Rockford.   

Following in his father’s footsteps, Hoolie earned his Stationary Engineer’s License so that he could operate the boiler heating system at Rockford High School.  He also served as the school’s janitor and as a school bus driver for a year and half before taking a job with United States Post Office in Rockford.  He held this job for twenty-five years, retiring in 1972 from his position as a rural mail carrier. 
At left is Dwight with his school bus.

In the early 1950’s, Hoolie’s younger brother Jim and his wife Jayne bought a house in Rockford right around the corner from his.  Over the next seven years, the couple would give birth to four children: Cheryl, Tom,Cindy, and Steve.

Hoolie was very involved in the children’s lives.  All four of the children would spend significant time at “Grandma and Uncle Hoolie’s house.”  Each year he would travel with Grandma and his two nieces to a vacation destination.  Hoolie would also go on fishing trips to Canada, with his brother Jim and nephews.  In addition, Hoolie helped his nephews Tom and Steve cut firewood to help put them through college.  He also taught Tom and Steve how to hunt and play golf.

Hoolie is still living at ninety-one years of age.  He is the last surviving sibling in his immediate family.  Some people might think that Hoolie missed out on a great part of life by never marrying or raising his own family, but they are wrong.  Over the years, Hoolie had his girlfriends; he just never found the one that was meant to be.  While he did not start his own family, he helped bring his immediate family through the Depression and looked after his mother until her death.  Also, because of his brother Jim’s untimely death at age 56 in 1977, Hoolie has lent many bits of fatherly wisdom to his nieces and nephews.

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Editor's note - interview with Hoolie Custer :

Hoolie explained that a stickball game was played with a broomstick and a strip of old bike tire tube (stuffed with a corncob) for a ball or a tin can. One of his buddies was Pete Hooks and was possibly in on the stickball game where he got his nickname. Hoolie explains that the boys were older and were teasing him. Of course he got mad, and so the nickname stuck.

The house he was born in still stands on Front Street in Rockford and is built on Walnut, handhewn logs.

Hoolie graduated from Rockford High School in 1933

Hoolie's family had electricity when it came to Rockford because his dad knew how to wire. He ran the Rockford power plant which was a Diesel engine. One evening it blew up, and blasted his dad through the plate glass front window of the Village Department. After that, Lloyd Sleppy changed the electric over to Dayton Power & Light Company.

The flowers growing in the Fiji Islands, where he was stationed, were gardenias - on bushes.

Ethel Ketcham was in charge of the welfare rations distribution in 1932 & 1933. There were items like flour and other basics that came into the village. She also was in charge of getting Hoolie into the CCC program. He was not the only young man to go: Max Putman, Aaron VanTilburg, Wilford Stober, Carl thompson and Davy Camel all went from Rockford. Usually the oldest son went, but Ethel chose Hoolie.

In the CCC, they prepared him for the real military life. He really enjoyed the weekend passes. Sheep and cattle herders, they saw on the road, often set fires to burn off the brush only to start fires. Once a couple of his friends won a ping-pong tournament. "We climbed Mt. Shasta, at
14, 000 feet, because it was there."  It is in the Sierra Nevadas and casts purple shadows, he recalls.

When he drove the school bus, he had to go get a chauffeur's license, which he got at Riley's in Rockford without a test.

He has been retired from the Post Office for 36 years, longer than he was employed. George R. Kinder was the post master. Employees were John Lee, Carl Copeland, Vera Samples, Wilbur "Fizz" Snyder, Blaine VanTilburg and Keith Rutledge.

Dwight loved to bowl, fish, and golf, and he played them "hard", winning championships and traveling to interesting places for tournaments for bowling, fishing and and golfing. He still enjoys an active life at his home where he does the Custer genealogy where he has traced his lineage back to the 14th century Hessians, studies the battles of World War II, does crossword puzzles and watches a little TV.  He has read nearly EVERY book in the Rockford Carnegie Library.

For many years, he wintered in Florida and Texas until a heart attack in 1997 slowed him down, but only a bit!

At left is Dwight with a big catch in the Everglades, Florida.

His address is 609 Columbia St., Rockford, OH   45882, to send a card.

Click on smaller thumbnail pictures below to enlarge them.