Navy Musician Tries, Fails to Enroll in Otterbein, 1918
When I look for a topic on which to write, the smallest words can start a trail of memories Take for example a return address I spotted in the Otterbein President’s Papers:
Mr. Floyd L. Roberts
U.S.S. Huntington
Care of P. M. New York City
Care of Band
When I was growing up in the 1970s, being “with the band” was a catchphrase for all the groupies, roadies, and such ilk that followed around a band. This letter, however, was dated December 19, 1918, long before modern “pop” music. What was the back story?
World War One ended much sooner and much faster than anyone could have predicted. Unfortunately, wars do not stop on a dime and send everyone home the next day. Nearly six million men were mobilized, and when the war ended, getting them home was almost as vast an undertaking as getting them to the scene of the action. The short duration of the war devastated many a soldier’s plans for life. Not surprisingly, there was a clamor from the soldiers to get home and back to “normalcy,” as presidential candidate and nearby neighbor Warren G. Harding misspoke the next year.
One of the men who begged for speedy release was Floyd L. Roberts. Born in Indiana in 1896, he was a student at Leander Clark College in Toledo, Iowa, when war broke out. At some point in his life, he learned to play a musical instrument. We don’t know the details, but Roberts was enrolled as a musician in the Navy, and was a member of the crew of a troop transport ship. That ship, the USS Huntington, had started life as the USS West Virginia. Launched in 1903, the Huntington saw duty in the Pacific. Several trips to Hawaii and time off Vera Cruz, Mexico, were some of the Huntington’s postings. When war came in 1917, she was brought round to the Atlantic. She spent most of the war ferrying soldiers to Europe and, after the Armistice, returning them home. The Huntington made the Atlantic crossing nine times during the war, and three more times after hostilities ended.[i]
Life on the Huntington, and for Floyd Roberts, is chronicled in a book titled Fighting the Hun on the U.S.S. Huntington by H. W. Winn (1919). Rushed into print as a serviceman’s souvenir, the book does give some interesting views of the shipboard life of Roberts and other sailors. The ship boasted a crew of 1200 men, and carried approximately 175,000 troops to and from the theater of war. We cannot be sure that Roberts was on every crossing, but the last trip, which his letter notes, left New York on October 14, 1918 and was part of a convoy of ten ships, plus the battleship Virginia. In addition to drill and band rehearsal, the crew recreated with pie-eating contests, interacting with the captain’s dog, boxing matches, cards, and listening to the ship’s Victrola.[ii]
The end of the war found Roberts still aboard the Huntington. He hoped to be discharged from the navy in time for the academic year starting in January, 1919. Since Leander Clark college was closing its doors, he contacted another prominent United Brethren college. Writing to Walter Clippinger at Otterbein in Westerville, Roberts asked if Clippinger could send him a letter of reference, explaining that he was in academic limbo. The Otterbein president quickly wrote an open letter, certifying Roberts’s time at Leander Clark and his desire to enroll in Otterbein.[iii]
But to no avail. As late as March of 1919, Roberts was in the port city of Brest in France, waiting for a discharge. On March 6, 1919, he wrote a thank you to Clippinger for his efforts. A second note later expressed some frustration at being left in Europe so long. But President Clippinger had done what he could. The president wrote similar letters for other soldiers asking for an early return, but got very little traction with the military bureaucracy. [iv]
Floyd Roberts is hard to trace after the war. He returned to Iowa, lived for a time in Seattle, and died in Massachusetts in 1950. He never attended Otterbein College. The Huntington was decommissioned in 1930. Her bell is on display on the campus of West Virginia University.[v] Although we might wish to know more about the life and times of Floyd Roberts and the U. S. S. Huntington, keep in mind that the bit we know of Roberts’s story because he wrote to President Clippinger begging for speedy discharge. Then as now, bureaucracy follows its own schedule.
Photo of Floyd Lester Roberts from FamilySearch.org
USS Huntington, Photo from , Fighting the Hun on the U.S.S. Huntington (1919) by H. W. Winn
[i] https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KD7W-4GY; H. W. Winn, Fighting the Hun on the U.S.S. Huntington (1919), p. 78.
[ii] Ibid, passim.
[iii] Floyd L. Roberts to W. G. Clippinger, December 6, 1918.; Clippinger to To Whom it May Concern, December 16, 1918. Both Presidents Papers, file 147, Otterbein University Archives.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Wikipedia