Click directly on both the photo of Johnny, and of the house where he was born, to read further history pertaining to the John Boylan house and farm.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John Anthony Boylan, was a self-made man in every sense of the word. He was simply known as "Johnny" to all who knew and loved him.
With an inborn sense of character, embodying the classic "American Everyman" qualities of hope, determination, and decency, Johnny was able to rise above a profoundly sad and deprived childhood to make his own contribution to American history as a United States Marine. A naturally gifted mechanic, he commanded a tank unit in the South Pacific in some of World War II's worst fighting.
Johnny was the firstborn child of Arch and Clara Wilhelm Boylan, born in the original brick farmhouse that his paternal grandfather John B. Boylan had built just after the end of the Civil War. The farmhouse was used by generations of the Boylan family and stood until 2009; the original farmland is still owned and occupied by a branch of the Boylan family in 2015, more than 150 years since its purchase.
Johnny never knew his paternal grandfather John, nor his Irish immigrant great-grandfather Patrick O'Boylan, who had both died years before he was born. But with the same brilliant blue eyes of both his grandfather and great-grandfather, Johnny knew he was an Irishman, and it was always his stated desire and intention to restore his surname to its original form of "O'Boylan", as the family had been known in their Dublin, Ireland home up until 1800.
Johnny enjoyed a happy, idyllic "farm boy" childhood for the first 7 years of his life, living in the beautiful two-story family farmhouse. A faithful friend, his Collie dog "Ring", escorted him each day to and from the one room country school house called the Boylan School. Later there were other dogs, little Fox Terriers named "Penny" and "Fritzy". By the time Johnny was 6, he had two younger sisters Margie and Mary, a younger brother Paul, and by the summer of 1925 his mother Clara was expecting a new little sister Jo.
But tragically that same year of 1925 both Clara and her husband Arch contracted tuberculosis, and spent months together in a local residential sanitarium recuperating. Finally recovered, Clara was able to return home to the farm to deliver her healthy baby girl in January of 1926. During Arch's and Clara's period of illness their 5 and 3 year old daughters Margie and Mary were taken in by Clara's childless older brother Alfred Wilhelm and his wife Anna for temporary safekeeping on the farm where Clara had grown up, a short distance from the Boylan farm.
After recovering from tuberculosis, Arch struggled to reinvigorate both his own health and the Boylan farm. But in the 1920's, with bumper crops thanks to new fertilizers, farm produce prices had crashed. Small farmers were thus under tremendous pressure, and vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous bankers. The original Boylan family farmhouse was lost to the bank first. Arch moved his family into the second smaller wood frame farm house that he still owned, situated on a hill behind the original farmhouse. But a few years later, with the advent of the stock market collapses of 1929 through 1931, that house and all of the farmland were lost to the bank as well. Alfred Wilhelm took advantage of the misfortune of his brother-in-law Arch, and the little girls Margie and Mary were never returned to their parents Clara and Arch. Johnny grieved the loss of his little playmate sisters the rest of his childhood. After leaving the Boylan farm, the family of now 5 moved just down the road, into a beautiful brick colonial style rental farm home owned by a local doctor (Doc Daugherty), staying for several years.
When his farmer father Arch died unexpectedly at age 45 in August of 1933, of a mosquito-borne encephalitis epidemic that had traveled north from St. Louis, Johnny left school at the age of just 14, and tried to keep his father's small farm business going. When he was unable to do so alone, he then lied about his age, and went to work in a metal foundry in the nearby large city of Peoria to support his destitute mother Clara and two younger siblings ages 9 and 7. Just a child, he was forced to work in substandard conditions, breathing air contaminated with soot and fine metal dust, which over a ten year period caused him to be frequently ill with severe respiratory problems. This exposure at such a young age likely instigated the Hodgkins disease that would later end his life so tragically. His factory wages paid the tuition which allowed his younger brother and sister to attend the best quality private Catholic high schools in Peoria, Spalding Institute boys high school, and the Academy of Our Lady girls high school.
For a decade Johnny took on the role of "father figure" for his two younger siblings. In his free time, he fished in the Illinois River, and hunted for pheasant, while his mother Clara grew asparagus, cabbages and strawberries in her garden. Returning from a hunting trip into the woods, he brought his little sister Jo large, beautiful, iridescent luna moths. He formed a partnership with a local buddy Bill Payne in running a small country gas station and cafe. His mother Clara cooked with Mary Payne in the cafe kitchen, and Jo, now a teen, served as a car hop. Johnny had some good friends: Virginia Smith Babcock ("Ginny") and John Babcock, Jim Crutchfield, Jack Walker, and Jim Tobin.
But fate intervened. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Johnny, along with his younger teen brother Paul, immediately knew that he had to leave his mother Clara and little sister, and fight for his country. He had always dreamed of flying planes, so he decided to drive from his Illinois home to an Air Force recruitment and training base in St. Louis, Missouri to apply to become a pilot. But lacking a high school diploma, he could not get into flight school. However, Johnny was a gifted mechanic, "a natural" who some called a mechanical genius. As an unschooled teenager, he had been able to tear apart and rebuild any engine. He made the decision to join the United States Marine Corps, and completed boot camp at Camp Pendleton in California.
During his boot camp training in 1942, Johnny wrote to his mother Clara in Illinois, and implored her to relocate to Los Angeles where he could see to it that she had a better life. In the summer of 1943, Clara boarded a cross-country train in Peoria, along with Johnny's 17 year old sister Jo who had just graduated from high school. A few days later the little family was reunited in Hollywood, and established new roots in their adopted city.
Just before he was shipped overseas, a Hollywood director visited Camp Pendleton looking for movie extras. Johnny was chosen with a group of fellow Marines to act as an extra in the movie "Gung Ho". With his typical confidence and humor, Johnny did his best to get his face onscreen. His face is clearly visible for several minutes just behind the shoulder of the star Randolph Scott, who is giving his final pep talk to the assembled Marines onboard a troop ship. Always the clever Irishman, Johnny even subtly blinked several times as a covert signal to his family and friends, and the film editor left it in.
While on the Hollywood sets and sound stages, the handsome Johnny with curly blonde hair was befriended by the famous actress Loretta Young. He was one of her favorite Marines during the filming, and she called him "my friend Johnny". It was no wonder that Loretta noticed him - Johnny had impeccable manners, and cut a dashing figure in his Marine uniform, with his blue eyes, and perfectly pressed shirts, complete with the sparkling emerald cuff links he had bought in Los Angeles. He attended parties with young actors like Robert Mitchum, and thoroughly enjoyed those few youthful fun times which were so different from the harsh years of his childhood. For a brief time Johnny dated a Ms. Ash, the first cousin of the actor Gregory Peck.
Soon the time arrived for Johnny to "ship out". Recognizing Johnny's mechanical skill, the Marine Corps assigned him to the First Armored Amphibian Battalion, Company B, which in World War II rode and fought in amphibious tanks. This was the first of only three armored amphibian battalions, which the Marine Corps created for the war in the Pacific. The primary mission was assault from the sea, across coral reefs, and onto hostile beaches. In 23 months overseas the Marines of the First Battalion led the assault in three invasions of enemy strongholds: Roi and Namur islands (part of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls), Guam, and Okinawa.
Johnny was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the South Pacific, and saw some of the most intense fighting of the war on many islands there, including Okinawa. Needless to say, Johnny kept the amphibious tanks running. In one terrible incident, a fellow Marine was killed when he peered out the hatch door of the tank that he and Johnny were in.
Johnny found the best friends he had ever had in the Marines. His three best Marine buddies, who along with Johnny called themselves "The Filthy Four" - William "Bill" Goforth, Marlin "Bud" Blayden, and Phillip Luchenbill - all survived the war. In the 1950's Bud Blayden ended up in Korea, this time fighting with the Army, much to the amusement of his former Marine commander who he ran into during the conflict. Johnny's younger brother Paul was in the Navy during the war. In a remarkably happy circumstance in the midst of the chaos of war, the two brothers were able to meet up with each other on an island in the South Pacific. How overjoyed they must have been to see each other. Paul also survived the war.
Toward the end of the war, Johnny knew he was ill, and the Marine Corps sent him to a hospital in Hawaii. The war ended, and Johnny returned to Los Angeles, where he helped his mother buy a new little home in the city of Westchester on the west side of Los Angeles, not far from the beach. In the garage of that home, Johnny set up his mechanic's shop. Like a true Marine, despite his serious illness Johnny was able to focus his tenacious "will power" and remaining physical energy on his dream - building one of the first inboard motor racing boats. He built his beautiful, sleek, solid wood boat and the engine from the ground up, and named it the "Gung Ho". He raced the boat off the coast of Long Beach, California and won a first place ribbon. The "Gung Ho" was his pride and joy.
In one of life's wonderful ironies, one of Johnny's most beloved and loyal friends was a Japanese-American nurse "Mary" who he met at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles after the war. During the war American-born Mary and her parents (her Japanese father born and raised in Hawaii, and her mother born in Japan) and siblings had been uprooted from their successful Los Angeles area farm business, and relocated to an internment camp in Wyoming. Mary turned 18 in the camp, but was allowed to leave to attend a nursing school, and became an R.N. Despite Johnny's illness, he and Mary enjoyed a few fun post-war years together in Los Angeles going "out on the town". Mary remained close friends with Johnny's mother and sister for decades after Johnny's passing.
After a valiant fight at UCLA Medical Center undergoing experimental drug treatments, Johnny died of Hodgkins disease in 1950. Since his treatment became the basis for future lymphoma medicines, Johnny's suffering was not in vain, but rather helped thousands of patients. He was just 33 years old. He was unmarried and left no children, never having the chance to participate in the post-war economy and "baby boom" of the 1950's.
Lacking storage space, Johnny's mother and two siblings had to sell the beautiful racing boat he had built, and lost track of the new owner. In the 1980's there was a clue that the boat still existed, but the connection was lost before it could be traced - possibly the "Gung Ho" still exists intact somewhere in 2015, probably in the southern California area.
The soul of Johnny lives on through his many nephews and nieces, and their children, including a grandnephew who joined the United States Marine Corps in 2005, and completed tours of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Johnny will always remain a legend in the hearts and minds of the family and friends who knew and loved him, A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John "Johnny" Anthony Boylan, United States Marine.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
The First Armored Amphibian Battalion, a special battalion, the first of its kind. It was formed, trained, and deployed for combat in a period of five months. The mission of our armored amphibians (amphibious tanks) was to lead the assault on enemy-held beaches.
Our battalion led the attack across the Pacific with the landings on Roi and Namur in the Marshall Islands, Guam in the Marianas Islands, and finally Okinawa, the last great battle in World War II. If we failed or faltered, the entire operation would be placed in jeopardy. WE NEVER DID.
-Louis Metzger,
Lieutenant General,
USMC (Retired)
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John Anthony Boylan, was a self-made man in every sense of the word. He was simply known as "Johnny" to all who knew and loved him.
With an inborn sense of character, embodying the classic "American Everyman" qualities of hope, determination, and decency, Johnny was able to rise above a profoundly sad and deprived childhood to make his own contribution to American history as a United States Marine. A naturally gifted mechanic, he commanded a tank unit in the South Pacific in some of World War II's worst fighting.
Johnny was the firstborn child of Arch and Clara Wilhelm Boylan, born in the original brick farmhouse that his paternal grandfather John B. Boylan had built just after the end of the Civil War. The farmhouse was used by generations of the Boylan family and stood until 2009; the original farmland is still owned and occupied by a branch of the Boylan family in 2015, more than 150 years since its purchase.
Johnny never knew his paternal grandfather John, nor his Irish immigrant great-grandfather Patrick O'Boylan, who had both died years before he was born. But with the same brilliant blue eyes of both his grandfather and great-grandfather, Johnny knew he was an Irishman, and it was always his stated desire and intention to restore his surname to its original form of "O'Boylan", as the family had been known in their Dublin, Ireland home up until 1800.
Johnny enjoyed a happy, idyllic "farm boy" childhood for the first 7 years of his life, living in the beautiful two-story family farmhouse. A faithful friend, his Collie dog "Ring", escorted him each day to and from the one room country school house called the Boylan School. Later there were other dogs, little Fox Terriers named "Penny" and "Fritzy". By the time Johnny was 6, he had two younger sisters Margie and Mary, a younger brother Paul, and by the summer of 1925 his mother Clara was expecting a new little sister Jo.
But tragically that same year of 1925 both Clara and her husband Arch contracted tuberculosis, and spent months together in a local residential sanitarium recuperating. Finally recovered, Clara was able to return home to the farm to deliver her healthy baby girl in January of 1926. During Arch's and Clara's period of illness their 5 and 3 year old daughters Margie and Mary were taken in by Clara's childless older brother Alfred Wilhelm and his wife Anna for temporary safekeeping on the farm where Clara had grown up, a short distance from the Boylan farm.
After recovering from tuberculosis, Arch struggled to reinvigorate both his own health and the Boylan farm. But in the 1920's, with bumper crops thanks to new fertilizers, farm produce prices had crashed. Small farmers were thus under tremendous pressure, and vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous bankers. The original Boylan family farmhouse was lost to the bank first. Arch moved his family into the second smaller wood frame farm house that he still owned, situated on a hill behind the original farmhouse. But a few years later, with the advent of the stock market collapses of 1929 through 1931, that house and all of the farmland were lost to the bank as well. Alfred Wilhelm took advantage of the misfortune of his brother-in-law Arch, and the little girls Margie and Mary were never returned to their parents Clara and Arch. Johnny grieved the loss of his little playmate sisters the rest of his childhood. After leaving the Boylan farm, the family of now 5 moved just down the road, into a beautiful brick colonial style rental farm home owned by a local doctor (Doc Daugherty), staying for several years.
When his farmer father Arch died unexpectedly at age 45 in August of 1933, of a mosquito-borne encephalitis epidemic that had traveled north from St. Louis, Johnny left school at the age of just 14, and tried to keep his father's small farm business going. When he was unable to do so alone, he then lied about his age, and went to work in a metal foundry in the nearby large city of Peoria to support his destitute mother Clara and two younger siblings ages 9 and 7. Just a child, he was forced to work in substandard conditions, breathing air contaminated with soot and fine metal dust, which over a ten year period caused him to be frequently ill with severe respiratory problems. This exposure at such a young age likely instigated the Hodgkins disease that would later end his life so tragically. His factory wages paid the tuition which allowed his younger brother and sister to attend the best quality private Catholic high schools in Peoria, Spalding Institute boys high school, and the Academy of Our Lady girls high school.
For a decade Johnny took on the role of "father figure" for his two younger siblings. In his free time, he fished in the Illinois River, and hunted for pheasant, while his mother Clara grew asparagus, cabbages and strawberries in her garden. Returning from a hunting trip into the woods, he brought his little sister Jo large, beautiful, iridescent luna moths. He formed a partnership with a local buddy Bill Payne in running a small country gas station and cafe. His mother Clara cooked with Mary Payne in the cafe kitchen, and Jo, now a teen, served as a car hop. Johnny had some good friends: Virginia Smith Babcock ("Ginny") and John Babcock, Jim Crutchfield, Jack Walker, and Jim Tobin.
But fate intervened. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Johnny, along with his younger teen brother Paul, immediately knew that he had to leave his mother Clara and little sister, and fight for his country. He had always dreamed of flying planes, so he decided to drive from his Illinois home to an Air Force recruitment and training base in St. Louis, Missouri to apply to become a pilot. But lacking a high school diploma, he could not get into flight school. However, Johnny was a gifted mechanic, "a natural" who some called a mechanical genius. As an unschooled teenager, he had been able to tear apart and rebuild any engine. He made the decision to join the United States Marine Corps, and completed boot camp at Camp Pendleton in California.
During his boot camp training in 1942, Johnny wrote to his mother Clara in Illinois, and implored her to relocate to Los Angeles where he could see to it that she had a better life. In the summer of 1943, Clara boarded a cross-country train in Peoria, along with Johnny's 17 year old sister Jo who had just graduated from high school. A few days later the little family was reunited in Hollywood, and established new roots in their adopted city.
Just before he was shipped overseas, a Hollywood director visited Camp Pendleton looking for movie extras. Johnny was chosen with a group of fellow Marines to act as an extra in the movie "Gung Ho". With his typical confidence and humor, Johnny did his best to get his face onscreen. His face is clearly visible for several minutes just behind the shoulder of the star Randolph Scott, who is giving his final pep talk to the assembled Marines onboard a troop ship. Always the clever Irishman, Johnny even subtly blinked several times as a covert signal to his family and friends, and the film editor left it in.
While on the Hollywood sets and sound stages, the handsome Johnny with curly blonde hair was befriended by the famous actress Loretta Young. He was one of her favorite Marines during the filming, and she called him "my friend Johnny". It was no wonder that Loretta noticed him - Johnny had impeccable manners, and cut a dashing figure in his Marine uniform, with his blue eyes, and perfectly pressed shirts, complete with the sparkling emerald cuff links he had bought in Los Angeles. He attended parties with young actors like Robert Mitchum, and thoroughly enjoyed those few youthful fun times which were so different from the harsh years of his childhood. For a brief time Johnny dated a Ms. Ash, the first cousin of the actor Gregory Peck.
Soon the time arrived for Johnny to "ship out". Recognizing Johnny's mechanical skill, the Marine Corps assigned him to the First Armored Amphibian Battalion, Company B, which in World War II rode and fought in amphibious tanks. This was the first of only three armored amphibian battalions, which the Marine Corps created for the war in the Pacific. The primary mission was assault from the sea, across coral reefs, and onto hostile beaches. In 23 months overseas the Marines of the First Battalion led the assault in three invasions of enemy strongholds: Roi and Namur islands (part of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls), Guam, and Okinawa.
Johnny was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the South Pacific, and saw some of the most intense fighting of the war on many islands there, including Okinawa. Needless to say, Johnny kept the amphibious tanks running. In one terrible incident, a fellow Marine was killed when he peered out the hatch door of the tank that he and Johnny were in.
Johnny found the best friends he had ever had in the Marines. His three best Marine buddies, who along with Johnny called themselves "The Filthy Four" - William "Bill" Goforth, Marlin "Bud" Blayden, and Phillip Luchenbill - all survived the war. In the 1950's Bud Blayden ended up in Korea, this time fighting with the Army, much to the amusement of his former Marine commander who he ran into during the conflict. Johnny's younger brother Paul was in the Navy during the war. In a remarkably happy circumstance in the midst of the chaos of war, the two brothers were able to meet up with each other on an island in the South Pacific. How overjoyed they must have been to see each other. Paul also survived the war.
Toward the end of the war, Johnny knew he was ill, and the Marine Corps sent him to a hospital in Hawaii. The war ended, and Johnny returned to Los Angeles, where he helped his mother buy a new little home in the city of Westchester on the west side of Los Angeles, not far from the beach. In the garage of that home, Johnny set up his mechanic's shop. Like a true Marine, despite his serious illness Johnny was able to focus his tenacious "will power" and remaining physical energy on his dream - building one of the first inboard motor racing boats. He built his beautiful, sleek, solid wood boat and the engine from the ground up, and named it the "Gung Ho". He raced the boat off the coast of Long Beach, California and won a first place ribbon. The "Gung Ho" was his pride and joy.
In one of life's wonderful ironies, one of Johnny's most beloved and loyal friends was a Japanese-American nurse "Mary" who he met at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles after the war. During the war American-born Mary and her parents (her Japanese father born and raised in Hawaii, and her mother born in Japan) and siblings had been uprooted from their successful Los Angeles area farm business, and relocated to an internment camp in Wyoming. Mary turned 18 in the camp, but was allowed to leave to attend a nursing school, and became an R.N. Despite Johnny's illness, he and Mary enjoyed a few fun post-war years together in Los Angeles going "out on the town". Mary remained close friends with Johnny's mother and sister for decades after Johnny's passing.
After a valiant fight at UCLA Medical Center undergoing experimental drug treatments, Johnny died of Hodgkins disease in 1950. Since his treatment became the basis for future lymphoma medicines, Johnny's suffering was not in vain, but rather helped thousands of patients. He was just 33 years old. He was unmarried and left no children, never having the chance to participate in the post-war economy and "baby boom" of the 1950's.
Lacking storage space, Johnny's mother and two siblings had to sell the beautiful racing boat he had built, and lost track of the new owner. In the 1980's there was a clue that the boat still existed, but the connection was lost before it could be traced - possibly the "Gung Ho" still exists intact somewhere in 2015, probably in the southern California area.
The soul of Johnny lives on through his many nephews and nieces, and their children, including a grandnephew who joined the United States Marine Corps in 2005, and completed tours of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Johnny will always remain a legend in the hearts and minds of the family and friends who knew and loved him, A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John "Johnny" Anthony Boylan, United States Marine.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
The First Armored Amphibian Battalion, a special battalion, the first of its kind. It was formed, trained, and deployed for combat in a period of five months. The mission of our armored amphibians (amphibious tanks) was to lead the assault on enemy-held beaches.
Our battalion led the attack across the Pacific with the landings on Roi and Namur in the Marshall Islands, Guam in the Marianas Islands, and finally Okinawa, the last great battle in World War II. If we failed or faltered, the entire operation would be placed in jeopardy. WE NEVER DID.
-Louis Metzger,
Lieutenant General,
USMC (Retired)
Click directly on both the photo of Johnny, and of the house where he was born, to read further history pertaining to the John Boylan house and farm.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John Anthony Boylan, was a self-made man in every sense of the word. He was simply known as "Johnny" to all who knew and loved him.
With an inborn sense of character, embodying the classic "American Everyman" qualities of hope, determination, and decency, Johnny was able to rise above a profoundly sad and deprived childhood to make his own contribution to American history as a United States Marine. A naturally gifted mechanic, he commanded a tank unit in the South Pacific in some of World War II's worst fighting.
Johnny was the firstborn child of Arch and Clara Wilhelm Boylan, born in the original brick farmhouse that his paternal grandfather John B. Boylan had built just after the end of the Civil War. The farmhouse was used by generations of the Boylan family and stood until 2009; the original farmland is still owned and occupied by a branch of the Boylan family in 2015, more than 150 years since its purchase.
Johnny never knew his paternal grandfather John, nor his Irish immigrant great-grandfather Patrick O'Boylan, who had both died years before he was born. But with the same brilliant blue eyes of both his grandfather and great-grandfather, Johnny knew he was an Irishman, and it was always his stated desire and intention to restore his surname to its original form of "O'Boylan", as the family had been known in their Dublin, Ireland home up until 1800.
Johnny enjoyed a happy, idyllic "farm boy" childhood for the first 7 years of his life, living in the beautiful two-story family farmhouse. A faithful friend, his Collie dog "Ring", escorted him each day to and from the one room country school house called the Boylan School. Later there were other dogs, little Fox Terriers named "Penny" and "Fritzy". By the time Johnny was 6, he had two younger sisters Margie and Mary, a younger brother Paul, and by the summer of 1925 his mother Clara was expecting a new little sister Jo.
But tragically that same year of 1925 both Clara and her husband Arch contracted tuberculosis, and spent months together in a local residential sanitarium recuperating. Finally recovered, Clara was able to return home to the farm to deliver her healthy baby girl in January of 1926. During Arch's and Clara's period of illness their 5 and 3 year old daughters Margie and Mary were taken in by Clara's childless older brother Alfred Wilhelm and his wife Anna for temporary safekeeping on the farm where Clara had grown up, a short distance from the Boylan farm.
After recovering from tuberculosis, Arch struggled to reinvigorate both his own health and the Boylan farm. But in the 1920's, with bumper crops thanks to new fertilizers, farm produce prices had crashed. Small farmers were thus under tremendous pressure, and vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous bankers. The original Boylan family farmhouse was lost to the bank first. Arch moved his family into the second smaller wood frame farm house that he still owned, situated on a hill behind the original farmhouse. But a few years later, with the advent of the stock market collapses of 1929 through 1931, that house and all of the farmland were lost to the bank as well. Alfred Wilhelm took advantage of the misfortune of his brother-in-law Arch, and the little girls Margie and Mary were never returned to their parents Clara and Arch. Johnny grieved the loss of his little playmate sisters the rest of his childhood. After leaving the Boylan farm, the family of now 5 moved just down the road, into a beautiful brick colonial style rental farm home owned by a local doctor (Doc Daugherty), staying for several years.
When his farmer father Arch died unexpectedly at age 45 in August of 1933, of a mosquito-borne encephalitis epidemic that had traveled north from St. Louis, Johnny left school at the age of just 14, and tried to keep his father's small farm business going. When he was unable to do so alone, he then lied about his age, and went to work in a metal foundry in the nearby large city of Peoria to support his destitute mother Clara and two younger siblings ages 9 and 7. Just a child, he was forced to work in substandard conditions, breathing air contaminated with soot and fine metal dust, which over a ten year period caused him to be frequently ill with severe respiratory problems. This exposure at such a young age likely instigated the Hodgkins disease that would later end his life so tragically. His factory wages paid the tuition which allowed his younger brother and sister to attend the best quality private Catholic high schools in Peoria, Spalding Institute boys high school, and the Academy of Our Lady girls high school.
For a decade Johnny took on the role of "father figure" for his two younger siblings. In his free time, he fished in the Illinois River, and hunted for pheasant, while his mother Clara grew asparagus, cabbages and strawberries in her garden. Returning from a hunting trip into the woods, he brought his little sister Jo large, beautiful, iridescent luna moths. He formed a partnership with a local buddy Bill Payne in running a small country gas station and cafe. His mother Clara cooked with Mary Payne in the cafe kitchen, and Jo, now a teen, served as a car hop. Johnny had some good friends: Virginia Smith Babcock ("Ginny") and John Babcock, Jim Crutchfield, Jack Walker, and Jim Tobin.
But fate intervened. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Johnny, along with his younger teen brother Paul, immediately knew that he had to leave his mother Clara and little sister, and fight for his country. He had always dreamed of flying planes, so he decided to drive from his Illinois home to an Air Force recruitment and training base in St. Louis, Missouri to apply to become a pilot. But lacking a high school diploma, he could not get into flight school. However, Johnny was a gifted mechanic, "a natural" who some called a mechanical genius. As an unschooled teenager, he had been able to tear apart and rebuild any engine. He made the decision to join the United States Marine Corps, and completed boot camp at Camp Pendleton in California.
During his boot camp training in 1942, Johnny wrote to his mother Clara in Illinois, and implored her to relocate to Los Angeles where he could see to it that she had a better life. In the summer of 1943, Clara boarded a cross-country train in Peoria, along with Johnny's 17 year old sister Jo who had just graduated from high school. A few days later the little family was reunited in Hollywood, and established new roots in their adopted city.
Just before he was shipped overseas, a Hollywood director visited Camp Pendleton looking for movie extras. Johnny was chosen with a group of fellow Marines to act as an extra in the movie "Gung Ho". With his typical confidence and humor, Johnny did his best to get his face onscreen. His face is clearly visible for several minutes just behind the shoulder of the star Randolph Scott, who is giving his final pep talk to the assembled Marines onboard a troop ship. Always the clever Irishman, Johnny even subtly blinked several times as a covert signal to his family and friends, and the film editor left it in.
While on the Hollywood sets and sound stages, the handsome Johnny with curly blonde hair was befriended by the famous actress Loretta Young. He was one of her favorite Marines during the filming, and she called him "my friend Johnny". It was no wonder that Loretta noticed him - Johnny had impeccable manners, and cut a dashing figure in his Marine uniform, with his blue eyes, and perfectly pressed shirts, complete with the sparkling emerald cuff links he had bought in Los Angeles. He attended parties with young actors like Robert Mitchum, and thoroughly enjoyed those few youthful fun times which were so different from the harsh years of his childhood. For a brief time Johnny dated a Ms. Ash, the first cousin of the actor Gregory Peck.
Soon the time arrived for Johnny to "ship out". Recognizing Johnny's mechanical skill, the Marine Corps assigned him to the First Armored Amphibian Battalion, Company B, which in World War II rode and fought in amphibious tanks. This was the first of only three armored amphibian battalions, which the Marine Corps created for the war in the Pacific. The primary mission was assault from the sea, across coral reefs, and onto hostile beaches. In 23 months overseas the Marines of the First Battalion led the assault in three invasions of enemy strongholds: Roi and Namur islands (part of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls), Guam, and Okinawa.
Johnny was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the South Pacific, and saw some of the most intense fighting of the war on many islands there, including Okinawa. Needless to say, Johnny kept the amphibious tanks running. In one terrible incident, a fellow Marine was killed when he peered out the hatch door of the tank that he and Johnny were in.
Johnny found the best friends he had ever had in the Marines. His three best Marine buddies, who along with Johnny called themselves "The Filthy Four" - William "Bill" Goforth, Marlin "Bud" Blayden, and Phillip Luchenbill - all survived the war. In the 1950's Bud Blayden ended up in Korea, this time fighting with the Army, much to the amusement of his former Marine commander who he ran into during the conflict. Johnny's younger brother Paul was in the Navy during the war. In a remarkably happy circumstance in the midst of the chaos of war, the two brothers were able to meet up with each other on an island in the South Pacific. How overjoyed they must have been to see each other. Paul also survived the war.
Toward the end of the war, Johnny knew he was ill, and the Marine Corps sent him to a hospital in Hawaii. The war ended, and Johnny returned to Los Angeles, where he helped his mother buy a new little home in the city of Westchester on the west side of Los Angeles, not far from the beach. In the garage of that home, Johnny set up his mechanic's shop. Like a true Marine, despite his serious illness Johnny was able to focus his tenacious "will power" and remaining physical energy on his dream - building one of the first inboard motor racing boats. He built his beautiful, sleek, solid wood boat and the engine from the ground up, and named it the "Gung Ho". He raced the boat off the coast of Long Beach, California and won a first place ribbon. The "Gung Ho" was his pride and joy.
In one of life's wonderful ironies, one of Johnny's most beloved and loyal friends was a Japanese-American nurse "Mary" who he met at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles after the war. During the war American-born Mary and her parents (her Japanese father born and raised in Hawaii, and her mother born in Japan) and siblings had been uprooted from their successful Los Angeles area farm business, and relocated to an internment camp in Wyoming. Mary turned 18 in the camp, but was allowed to leave to attend a nursing school, and became an R.N. Despite Johnny's illness, he and Mary enjoyed a few fun post-war years together in Los Angeles going "out on the town". Mary remained close friends with Johnny's mother and sister for decades after Johnny's passing.
After a valiant fight at UCLA Medical Center undergoing experimental drug treatments, Johnny died of Hodgkins disease in 1950. Since his treatment became the basis for future lymphoma medicines, Johnny's suffering was not in vain, but rather helped thousands of patients. He was just 33 years old. He was unmarried and left no children, never having the chance to participate in the post-war economy and "baby boom" of the 1950's.
Lacking storage space, Johnny's mother and two siblings had to sell the beautiful racing boat he had built, and lost track of the new owner. In the 1980's there was a clue that the boat still existed, but the connection was lost before it could be traced - possibly the "Gung Ho" still exists intact somewhere in 2015, probably in the southern California area.
The soul of Johnny lives on through his many nephews and nieces, and their children, including a grandnephew who joined the United States Marine Corps in 2005, and completed tours of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Johnny will always remain a legend in the hearts and minds of the family and friends who knew and loved him, A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John "Johnny" Anthony Boylan, United States Marine.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
The First Armored Amphibian Battalion, a special battalion, the first of its kind. It was formed, trained, and deployed for combat in a period of five months. The mission of our armored amphibians (amphibious tanks) was to lead the assault on enemy-held beaches.
Our battalion led the attack across the Pacific with the landings on Roi and Namur in the Marshall Islands, Guam in the Marianas Islands, and finally Okinawa, the last great battle in World War II. If we failed or faltered, the entire operation would be placed in jeopardy. WE NEVER DID.
-Louis Metzger,
Lieutenant General,
USMC (Retired)
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John Anthony Boylan, was a self-made man in every sense of the word. He was simply known as "Johnny" to all who knew and loved him.
With an inborn sense of character, embodying the classic "American Everyman" qualities of hope, determination, and decency, Johnny was able to rise above a profoundly sad and deprived childhood to make his own contribution to American history as a United States Marine. A naturally gifted mechanic, he commanded a tank unit in the South Pacific in some of World War II's worst fighting.
Johnny was the firstborn child of Arch and Clara Wilhelm Boylan, born in the original brick farmhouse that his paternal grandfather John B. Boylan had built just after the end of the Civil War. The farmhouse was used by generations of the Boylan family and stood until 2009; the original farmland is still owned and occupied by a branch of the Boylan family in 2015, more than 150 years since its purchase.
Johnny never knew his paternal grandfather John, nor his Irish immigrant great-grandfather Patrick O'Boylan, who had both died years before he was born. But with the same brilliant blue eyes of both his grandfather and great-grandfather, Johnny knew he was an Irishman, and it was always his stated desire and intention to restore his surname to its original form of "O'Boylan", as the family had been known in their Dublin, Ireland home up until 1800.
Johnny enjoyed a happy, idyllic "farm boy" childhood for the first 7 years of his life, living in the beautiful two-story family farmhouse. A faithful friend, his Collie dog "Ring", escorted him each day to and from the one room country school house called the Boylan School. Later there were other dogs, little Fox Terriers named "Penny" and "Fritzy". By the time Johnny was 6, he had two younger sisters Margie and Mary, a younger brother Paul, and by the summer of 1925 his mother Clara was expecting a new little sister Jo.
But tragically that same year of 1925 both Clara and her husband Arch contracted tuberculosis, and spent months together in a local residential sanitarium recuperating. Finally recovered, Clara was able to return home to the farm to deliver her healthy baby girl in January of 1926. During Arch's and Clara's period of illness their 5 and 3 year old daughters Margie and Mary were taken in by Clara's childless older brother Alfred Wilhelm and his wife Anna for temporary safekeeping on the farm where Clara had grown up, a short distance from the Boylan farm.
After recovering from tuberculosis, Arch struggled to reinvigorate both his own health and the Boylan farm. But in the 1920's, with bumper crops thanks to new fertilizers, farm produce prices had crashed. Small farmers were thus under tremendous pressure, and vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous bankers. The original Boylan family farmhouse was lost to the bank first. Arch moved his family into the second smaller wood frame farm house that he still owned, situated on a hill behind the original farmhouse. But a few years later, with the advent of the stock market collapses of 1929 through 1931, that house and all of the farmland were lost to the bank as well. Alfred Wilhelm took advantage of the misfortune of his brother-in-law Arch, and the little girls Margie and Mary were never returned to their parents Clara and Arch. Johnny grieved the loss of his little playmate sisters the rest of his childhood. After leaving the Boylan farm, the family of now 5 moved just down the road, into a beautiful brick colonial style rental farm home owned by a local doctor (Doc Daugherty), staying for several years.
When his farmer father Arch died unexpectedly at age 45 in August of 1933, of a mosquito-borne encephalitis epidemic that had traveled north from St. Louis, Johnny left school at the age of just 14, and tried to keep his father's small farm business going. When he was unable to do so alone, he then lied about his age, and went to work in a metal foundry in the nearby large city of Peoria to support his destitute mother Clara and two younger siblings ages 9 and 7. Just a child, he was forced to work in substandard conditions, breathing air contaminated with soot and fine metal dust, which over a ten year period caused him to be frequently ill with severe respiratory problems. This exposure at such a young age likely instigated the Hodgkins disease that would later end his life so tragically. His factory wages paid the tuition which allowed his younger brother and sister to attend the best quality private Catholic high schools in Peoria, Spalding Institute boys high school, and the Academy of Our Lady girls high school.
For a decade Johnny took on the role of "father figure" for his two younger siblings. In his free time, he fished in the Illinois River, and hunted for pheasant, while his mother Clara grew asparagus, cabbages and strawberries in her garden. Returning from a hunting trip into the woods, he brought his little sister Jo large, beautiful, iridescent luna moths. He formed a partnership with a local buddy Bill Payne in running a small country gas station and cafe. His mother Clara cooked with Mary Payne in the cafe kitchen, and Jo, now a teen, served as a car hop. Johnny had some good friends: Virginia Smith Babcock ("Ginny") and John Babcock, Jim Crutchfield, Jack Walker, and Jim Tobin.
But fate intervened. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Johnny, along with his younger teen brother Paul, immediately knew that he had to leave his mother Clara and little sister, and fight for his country. He had always dreamed of flying planes, so he decided to drive from his Illinois home to an Air Force recruitment and training base in St. Louis, Missouri to apply to become a pilot. But lacking a high school diploma, he could not get into flight school. However, Johnny was a gifted mechanic, "a natural" who some called a mechanical genius. As an unschooled teenager, he had been able to tear apart and rebuild any engine. He made the decision to join the United States Marine Corps, and completed boot camp at Camp Pendleton in California.
During his boot camp training in 1942, Johnny wrote to his mother Clara in Illinois, and implored her to relocate to Los Angeles where he could see to it that she had a better life. In the summer of 1943, Clara boarded a cross-country train in Peoria, along with Johnny's 17 year old sister Jo who had just graduated from high school. A few days later the little family was reunited in Hollywood, and established new roots in their adopted city.
Just before he was shipped overseas, a Hollywood director visited Camp Pendleton looking for movie extras. Johnny was chosen with a group of fellow Marines to act as an extra in the movie "Gung Ho". With his typical confidence and humor, Johnny did his best to get his face onscreen. His face is clearly visible for several minutes just behind the shoulder of the star Randolph Scott, who is giving his final pep talk to the assembled Marines onboard a troop ship. Always the clever Irishman, Johnny even subtly blinked several times as a covert signal to his family and friends, and the film editor left it in.
While on the Hollywood sets and sound stages, the handsome Johnny with curly blonde hair was befriended by the famous actress Loretta Young. He was one of her favorite Marines during the filming, and she called him "my friend Johnny". It was no wonder that Loretta noticed him - Johnny had impeccable manners, and cut a dashing figure in his Marine uniform, with his blue eyes, and perfectly pressed shirts, complete with the sparkling emerald cuff links he had bought in Los Angeles. He attended parties with young actors like Robert Mitchum, and thoroughly enjoyed those few youthful fun times which were so different from the harsh years of his childhood. For a brief time Johnny dated a Ms. Ash, the first cousin of the actor Gregory Peck.
Soon the time arrived for Johnny to "ship out". Recognizing Johnny's mechanical skill, the Marine Corps assigned him to the First Armored Amphibian Battalion, Company B, which in World War II rode and fought in amphibious tanks. This was the first of only three armored amphibian battalions, which the Marine Corps created for the war in the Pacific. The primary mission was assault from the sea, across coral reefs, and onto hostile beaches. In 23 months overseas the Marines of the First Battalion led the assault in three invasions of enemy strongholds: Roi and Namur islands (part of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls), Guam, and Okinawa.
Johnny was promoted to Corporal, and sent to the South Pacific, and saw some of the most intense fighting of the war on many islands there, including Okinawa. Needless to say, Johnny kept the amphibious tanks running. In one terrible incident, a fellow Marine was killed when he peered out the hatch door of the tank that he and Johnny were in.
Johnny found the best friends he had ever had in the Marines. His three best Marine buddies, who along with Johnny called themselves "The Filthy Four" - William "Bill" Goforth, Marlin "Bud" Blayden, and Phillip Luchenbill - all survived the war. In the 1950's Bud Blayden ended up in Korea, this time fighting with the Army, much to the amusement of his former Marine commander who he ran into during the conflict. Johnny's younger brother Paul was in the Navy during the war. In a remarkably happy circumstance in the midst of the chaos of war, the two brothers were able to meet up with each other on an island in the South Pacific. How overjoyed they must have been to see each other. Paul also survived the war.
Toward the end of the war, Johnny knew he was ill, and the Marine Corps sent him to a hospital in Hawaii. The war ended, and Johnny returned to Los Angeles, where he helped his mother buy a new little home in the city of Westchester on the west side of Los Angeles, not far from the beach. In the garage of that home, Johnny set up his mechanic's shop. Like a true Marine, despite his serious illness Johnny was able to focus his tenacious "will power" and remaining physical energy on his dream - building one of the first inboard motor racing boats. He built his beautiful, sleek, solid wood boat and the engine from the ground up, and named it the "Gung Ho". He raced the boat off the coast of Long Beach, California and won a first place ribbon. The "Gung Ho" was his pride and joy.
In one of life's wonderful ironies, one of Johnny's most beloved and loyal friends was a Japanese-American nurse "Mary" who he met at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles after the war. During the war American-born Mary and her parents (her Japanese father born and raised in Hawaii, and her mother born in Japan) and siblings had been uprooted from their successful Los Angeles area farm business, and relocated to an internment camp in Wyoming. Mary turned 18 in the camp, but was allowed to leave to attend a nursing school, and became an R.N. Despite Johnny's illness, he and Mary enjoyed a few fun post-war years together in Los Angeles going "out on the town". Mary remained close friends with Johnny's mother and sister for decades after Johnny's passing.
After a valiant fight at UCLA Medical Center undergoing experimental drug treatments, Johnny died of Hodgkins disease in 1950. Since his treatment became the basis for future lymphoma medicines, Johnny's suffering was not in vain, but rather helped thousands of patients. He was just 33 years old. He was unmarried and left no children, never having the chance to participate in the post-war economy and "baby boom" of the 1950's.
Lacking storage space, Johnny's mother and two siblings had to sell the beautiful racing boat he had built, and lost track of the new owner. In the 1980's there was a clue that the boat still existed, but the connection was lost before it could be traced - possibly the "Gung Ho" still exists intact somewhere in 2015, probably in the southern California area.
The soul of Johnny lives on through his many nephews and nieces, and their children, including a grandnephew who joined the United States Marine Corps in 2005, and completed tours of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Johnny will always remain a legend in the hearts and minds of the family and friends who knew and loved him, A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, John "Johnny" Anthony Boylan, United States Marine.
*****+~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+++~~~~~O'BOYLAN~~~~~+++~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~+*****
The First Armored Amphibian Battalion, a special battalion, the first of its kind. It was formed, trained, and deployed for combat in a period of five months. The mission of our armored amphibians (amphibious tanks) was to lead the assault on enemy-held beaches.
Our battalion led the attack across the Pacific with the landings on Roi and Namur in the Marshall Islands, Guam in the Marianas Islands, and finally Okinawa, the last great battle in World War II. If we failed or faltered, the entire operation would be placed in jeopardy. WE NEVER DID.
-Louis Metzger,
Lieutenant General,
USMC (Retired)
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