Joe Boy’s parents, Joseph House, Sr. and Leonora Gemmill, during their courting days. They were married in February 1921, and Joe Boy was born on July 26, 1923 in in Deer Park, Washington.
From Leonora’s scrapbook.
At a logging camp in Eastern Washington.
Joe Boy as a toddler.
First little sister - Louise.
Two little sisters - Leveryle & Louise.
Three little sisters! Louise, Leveryle and Gale.
Joe Boy with his friend, Johnny.
In front of the one-room schoolhouse not far from Rose Hill that he attended through 8th grade.
With “the Best Dad in this whole world, bar none.”
The Springdale High School class of 1941. Joe Boy House (bottom row, first on left) is sitting next to his friend, Glen Simmelink. After the war, Glen’s youngest brother, Russ, married Joe Boy’s younger sister, Louise. Russ and Louise Simmelink are the parents of the author, Janet Simmelink.
Joe Boy and his faithful dog, Pinky.
Joe House Sr. with a polled shorthorn steer.
During the war, cousin Bobby Gemmill (far right) lent a hand with summer chores on the ranch.
Home on leave with, from left: Gale, Louise and Leveryle.
Joe Boy was his dad’s partner in their pre-war logging operation, near Springdale, Washington.
Studio shot, 1943.
Drinking Zombies during a weekend leave from Camp Pendleton.
In Tacoma wearing his dress blues and holding his cousin Lois’s twins.
Joe Boy, top row, second from left, at Camp Tarawa, on the Big Island of Hawaii. On November 19, 1944, he wrote:
“Here’s a picture of the boys in our squad. The guy in the blur and holding the black cat is our squad leader. They are a pretty good bunch of guys. A couple of them are missing though I don’t know where they were when the picture was taken.”
A few months later, the Marine Corps landed on Iwo Jima, where most of the men in this squad were wounded or killed in action.