In July of 2018, the Medina Reference Desk received a request for a yearbook photo of a young man who had died in World War II. Eugene Bosnavits. Eugene had graduated from Brunswick High School and so we contacted the Brunswick Historical Society who provided the photo. Intrigued by the snippets of information about Eugene's short life led me to write a blog about the research on 8 August 2018.
You can read the original post HERE.
The blog was well received and we were gratified to be part of a team that had shed light on one individual's sacrifice during World War II.
More than two years after the blog was posted, I was approached by a woman whose son had read the blog and he really appreciated finding another source for the young man from Medina County who had given his all for his country. You see her son, Hudson Louie, is a budding historian.
Hudson has created a memorial to Ohio's World War II Fallen Service Members on the FindaGrave web site that has over 2500 names listed so far. Wikipedia lists 23,000 Ohio casualties for the war so he has a lot of work ahead of him.
On a more local level, Hudson created a Google web site titled Medina's Fallen War Heroes. Arranged by war, click on the individual photos to find out more about each soldier. These are both works in progress.
And he had additional information about Eugene Bosnavits. James Kittleson, the pilot of the B-17 that "Bossy" served on had given an interview about that flight. And he provided photos.
The tail gunner had full responsibility to protect the rear of the aircraft. In addition, they were the only crew member who could see behind the plane and reported to the captain if they saw incoming fighters. It was a very cramped and often cold location. Eugene's short stature, he was listed as 5' 4" on his draft card, would have been an asset. The tail gunner's position was the most vulnerable and it was widely quoted during World War II that the life expectancy of a tail gunner was 4 missions, or about 2 weeks.
As noted in the original blog post, Eugene had only been sent to Europe on 4 August of 1944 and he was shot down on 12 September. He was there just a little over 5 weeks.
Thank you Hudson for shining more light on one of Medina's fallen airmen.
Thank you for the update! It is nice to hear about a young person being so interested in our history.
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