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Everyone is invited to Davis\u2019s funeral procession. The procession is scheduled to leave at 10 a.m. from Delong-Baker & Lanning Funeral Home located at 56 S. Fifth St. and will travel to Zanesville Memorial Park at 1475 Military Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Waite hopes people line the streets, waving flags. Davis has been away from Zanesville for more than 70 years. To his remaining family, and to the city, this is a celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite an honor to close this chapter,\u201d said Carolyn Waite, Dick\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Waite remembers Davis was a ballplayer in Zanesville, though he never watched him play. While Davis worked for Mosaic Tile, he played for the Mosaic Tile Softball team and his team won the Industrial League Championship of 1941. Waite remembers playing with the toy trucks Davis left at his parents\u2019 home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I was 7 years old, he came home from leave and he took me on a ride in his Oldsmobile,\u201d Waite said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Davis was outgoing, he said. He was friendly. He was like his mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Davis enlisted, he graduated from a government radio school and was sent to Australia in 1942 as a code telegrapher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal (posthumous); Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one Silver Service Star and one Bronze Service Star; World War II Victory Medal; Presidential Unit Citation with one Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster; Philippine Defense Ribbon; and Philippine Republic Presidential Unit Citation, according to military records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ken Bonnell, funeral director at Delong-Baker & Lanning, said he would also like to see the community turn out for Davis on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having a part in Davis\u2019s ceremony is an honor, Bonnell said. Davis is one of the last of the greatest generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reading his last letter home was a humbling experience for Bonnell. Davis never got to start a family, he said. He never got to have kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like the guy\u2019s speaking to you,\u201d he said. \u201cAll he wanted to do what come home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of his page-long letter, after he asked for more letters from his brothers and after he signed his name, Davis added another line, underlined and in quotes: \u201cGod be with us till we meet again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In what his family believes was his last letter home to Zanesville, Sgt. Harold Davis wrote that his only dream was to see the United States again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":84795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":12,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,12,25],"tags":[],"coauthors":[5230],"class_list":["post-41856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"DB2Y6PLCMJGFHHF72P7VXJVEAM","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2017\/08\/12\/remains-of-ohio-wwii-soldier-finally-come-home\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n