-
Above are the 22 new memorial bricks recently installed at the Currie Veterans Memorial. -
Pictured above are six of the seven Sammons family first cousins who remain from the original 31. Front row, L to R: Donna Rank, Faribault; Kathy Haas, Marshall, Mary Ann Meatzer, Alexandria. Back: Robert Sammons, New Prague, Bruce Hudson, Brainerd, John Sammons, Hastings. Not pictured is Paula Engen, Surprise, AR.
By Norma Dittman Eleven memorial bricks, with each one cast with the last name of Sammons, were recently added to the Currie Veterans Memorial at End O Line Park. “They were to be added in time for this year’s Memorial Day, and with that being the case, we also decided to have a Sammons family reunion on Saturday, May 23rd, in Currie,” John Sammons explained. “There were another eleven bricks added by other families, too. Currie has an absolutely beautiful Veterans Memorial.”
More than three years ago, John had contacted Currie American Legion to ask what had to be done to have the Sammons family bricks added. The hope was that a supplier could be found that would be able to match the other bricks already in place. Last year, the order was sent to a supplier by the Currie American Legion, and the bricks arrived during the fall of 2025.
The history of the Sammons family service to their country started with one couple, Anna and William. They had 15 children during the years of 19131930 - including three sets of twins.
The Sammon’s granddaughter, Lorna Glatz, was very interested in learning about her family’s military service and began researching and recording the information that she found.
She learned that ten of Anna Sammons children served during World War II, and another served during the Korean War. Glatz contacted her cousin, John, and he took up the work of accurately researching and preserving the family’s military history. To date, he has 481 slides that he shared with family members at their recent reunion.
Researching the family’s military service was not an easy task, as John found that many of the records were destroyed in a fire on July 12, 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.
The records that weren’t lost to the fire were destroyed by water damage. He took up the task of writing letters to military headquarters for information, perusing historical books, using the internet and visiting gravesites.
Although Anna (who lived in Currie until 1944) had kept all of the correspondence from her military children in scrapbooks, that information was not of help, either. When Anna passed away in 1961, the scrapbooks went to Anna’s daughter Angeline Hudson, Tracy, MN. The entire collection of scrapbooks was lost during the 1968 Tracy tornado.
Through research, it was learned that the first of the Sammons children who served during World War II was Melford, who was born in 1919. The others were Johnnie (1913), James (1921), Raymond (1918), twins Floyd and Freeman (1923), Marvin (1925), Leslie (1926), Marie (1925), and Clarence (1916). Vernon (1930) served during the Korean War.
Saturday’s Sammons Family Reunion included a three-hour presentation by John regarding the family’s military service, and the brick installation. The presentation included a PowerPoint presentation in which John shared the 481 slides that have been compiled.
As a result of the reunion, the remaining first cousins were able to have their photo taken. “We started with 31 first cousins,” John said, “but we are now numbering just seven.”
