OMAHA, Neb. — For decades, Herbert O’Hara’s grave did not reflect an important part of his life: his service in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Now, a group of his former students who knew O’Hara as their high school janitor have helped change that.
The effort began as classmates from the St. John’s Class of 1964 prepared for an upcoming reunion.
Bruce Atkinson was researching classmates and gravestones when his search led him to O’Hara.
“I was researching gravestones and I realized that our janitor did not have a gravestone,” Atkinson said.
The discovery took on even greater significance when Atkinson learned O’Hara had served in the Army during World War II.
“I thought, wow, not only was he a janitor, he was a serviceman without a grave,” Atkinson said.
Atkinson turned to his classmate, Hughleen Thorsen, for help.
The two began researching O’Hara’s life and learned he did not have family when he died. That left people who had known him decades earlier trying to give him the recognition they believed he deserved.
“We’re in the place of his family, but he’ll have everything he should have had, and that was our goal,” Thorsen said.
Finding proof of O’Hara’s military service
Atkinson and Thorsen wanted O’Hara’s headstone to recognize his military service, but first they needed documentation.
Their search eventually led to a final pay voucher from the National Archives. Thorsen said the document provided the evidence needed to secure O’Hara’s headstone.
The classmates acknowledge there is a remarkable element to what they have done: they went to such lengths for a man few of them really knew.
“I don’t have any real memories of him,” Linda McGuire said.
“Very few of us young people spoke to him,” Sue Miles said.
“All I knew is that his name was Mr. O’Hara,” Atkinson said.
But decades later, those former students gathered at O’Hara’s gravesite to honor him as more than the janitor they remembered from the halls of their school.
The ceremony included an honor guard, a 21-gun salute and the playing of taps.
“I’ll be standing there, saluting him,” Atkinson said.
For Thorsen, the ceremony represented an opportunity to give O’Hara what his classmates believe he should have received when he was first buried.
“It’ll be everything he should have had when he died,” Thorsen said.
One mystery remains
There is still one piece of O’Hara’s story that Atkinson and Thorsen have not been able to recover: a photograph.
St. John’s was located on Creighton University’s campus before the school was torn down. 3 News Now's Jeremy Fredricks contacted Creighton’s archives in hopes that a photograph of O’Hara had survived there, but archivists were unable to find one.
Thorsen said finding that photograph is now her next goal.
After helping put recognition of O’Hara’s service on his grave, she hopes to finally put a face to his name.
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