LIVING HISTORY
apparently the only photo anyone has of him.
The life insurance policy from State Life Insurance Co. of
Indianapolis — found in a collection of family records my
aunt, Susan Gladwin Enns Stans, gave me — yielded far
more information than might be expected. An old piece of
carbon paper taped to the policy — his medical report — revealed
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that he was a smoker and a moderate drinker and was
in good health, except for a case of malaria suffered during a
three-month period at the age of 17.
Most interesting of all was that the policy said he was living
in Green Cove Springs, a town in Clay County more than
200 miles away from Fort Pierce. Apparently, after graduating
from high school, he had moved there. Bob Gladwin’s memoir
said that he worked as a chauffeur for a “Mr. Shands.’’
That Shands undoubtedly was Thomas Shands, who had a
large lumber company and mill in Clay County.
Thomas Shands had a son, William Augustine Shands, who
would go on to be a state senator and lead efforts to create the
University of Florida’s Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville,
which continues to bear his name.
W.A. Shands’ draft registration card filled out in May 1917
showed that he sold life insurance for State Life Insurance
Co. of Indianapolis — the same company Stephen Gladwin
bought his policy from. Apparently, W.A. Shands was a
pretty good salesman, persuading his dad’s chauffeur — an
unmarried 19-year-old with no children — to buy an insurance
policy with an unspecified beneficiary.
THE WINDS OF WAR
Stephen Nelson Gladwin grew up in a family of military
ancestors. His paternal grandfather who shared his name was
a Union boat builder and his maternal grandfather, Francis
Marion McMeekin, served in the Confederacy and was at the
surrender at Appomattox. His great-great-great grandfather,
Dr. Robert Usher, fought in the American Revolution.
Stephen’s early adulthood was fraught with talk of war.
While the United States was neutral when the war erupted in
1914, the country was eventually drawn into it after a series
of U.S. ships were sunk by the Germans.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked a special
joint session of the United States Congress for a declaration
of war against the German Empire. Congress responded
with the declaration on April 6.
Three weeks later, on April 28, 1917, Stephen Gladwin, 20,
enlisted in the U.S. Army, according to his service record. He
was inducted at Fort Screven, Georgia, and later transferred
to Oglethorpe, Georgia. Then must have come the heartbreak
and the direction that would seal his fate. Instead of being
sent overseas, he was assigned to Fort Bliss, Texas, as a member
of Company A, 7th Field Signal Battalion, for service on
the Mexican border.
While Mexico was embroiled in civil war, largely over the
legitimacy of presidential elections, and officially was neutral
in World War I, the United States had cause for concern over
its neighbor to the south, as the Germans were working with
an exiled former president Victoriano Huerta to overthrow
the government of newly elected Venustiano Carranza.
While Huerta was arrested in Texas before he could return
to Mexico and the plot was foiled, the Germans nonetheless
tried to persuade Carranza to go to war with the United
States, and in return Germany would help Mexico regain the
states of Arizona, Texas and New Mexico that were lost in the
war of 1847. Though he formed a commission to consider the
offer, Carranza eventually refused.
Against this background, during his service on the Mexican
border, Stephen Gladwin “was repeatedly under fire at
Nogales, Arizona, during a two days battle with the Mexican
banditti, Germany’s paid agents against the United States,’’
his obituary stated.
THE SILENT KILLER
Stephen Gladwin survived that battle at Nogales and perhaps
others, but what he faced back at Fort Bliss was deadlier.
The Spanish flu, which would kill far more people than
war, had arrived in El Paso, where Fort Bliss is located, in
September 1918. By October, it had spread to such a degree
that townspeople couldn’t congregate in public places such
as schools, churches or theaters. Even funerals were banned.
Soldiers at Fort Bliss were confined to their posts.
El Paso was especially susceptible. It had a dense urban core,
and Fort Bliss housed soldiers in close quarters and many of
them had recently returned from Europe, where the flu had
taken hold. In all, the flu had killed more than 600 people in
El Paso in 1918. Declared the worst health crisis in human history,
the flu claimed a minimum of 21 million lives, with some
estimates putting the death toll past 50 million. In all, 53,402
U.S. soldiers were killed in action in World War I while another
63,114 died from disease such as Spanish flu and other causes.
But things took a significant turn for the better that November.
On Nov. 9, the city’s ban on public gatherings was >>
Stephen Gladwin’s Service card shows he was promoted to corporal
Nov. 10, 1918, just one day before the end of World War I.
Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, as it appeared in 1916, shortly before Stephen Gladwin
arrived as a private.