William Calvert McCandless

William Calvert McCandless was born on November 2, 1917 in Greensburg, Kiowa, KS to Calvert Cotton McCandless and Mary Ann Long. His father was 25 years old and his mother was 23 years old when he was born. He was the oldest of 7 children, and had four brothers and two sisters.

He married Violet Marie Burwell on June 17, 1942 in California. They had three children:

1. David McCandless

2. Marilyn McCandless

3. Robert McCandless

World War II:

I sent off for Grandpa's war records but only received a letter back stating they had been destroyed in a fire. Hopefully through some research I will be able to piece together his military record.

Grandma (Violet Marie Burwell McCandless) once told me a story about how Grandpa took two MP's with sidearms and a Japanese guide with him to find Kate Goodman (Ida Long Goodman's sister-in-law) who was a missionary in Japan. They were successful in getting her out of Japan safely, but unfortunately I know no other details.

10/5/2020 - After some researching online, I found a Kate Alice Goodman whose interracial marriage to Reverend Joseph Kenichi Inazawa made headlines in California in 1910. They were missionaries at the historic Wintersburg Village in California, and then moved to Japan in 1921. If William did help her get out of Japan during WW2, she returned, because in 1954 she is listed as a survivor in the obituary of her brother, R.W. Goodman, who is buried in Rose Valley Cemetery (in the same cemetery as William's parents), still living in Japan. Source: https://historicwintersburg.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-marriage-that-made-headlines.html

My notes also state that Grandpa was in the Emporia National Guard, went to San Francisco and from there went into the mountains and slept in tents all winter (the US thought that Japan was going to invade the west coast). Then they went to L.A. where they got married (in Englewood). Grandpa was in the states for three years, and went to the South Pacific, where, per my grandmother, he was concerned with both malaria and "Japanese in the trees." He was "screened out for Africa" and at one time tried to go into the Air Corp, but my notes say "couldn't fly." At one point he was with the 36th Infantry Division from Texas, but then my later notes say he transferred out of the 35th and went into the 81st Division, the same one as Hugh McCandless. He was in the Philippines for two years at the Palawan Islands. His mail was censored.

Grandpa was greatly traumatized by what he saw during the war, and while he refused to talk about it he did receive psychological treatment shortly upon his return. If one puts together where he was stationed and his reaction to it, it is easy to wonder if he was one of the soldiers tasked with identifying victims of the Palawan Massacre--where about 140 POW's were burned alive and subsequently buried by the Japanese. I might never know for sure.

In going through some of his military memorabilia after his death, my dad found that grandpa had taken flying lessons. Dad said he was always trying something new.

A few years before his death, William was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

William died on November 17, 1987 at the age of 70 of heart failure in St. John, Stafford County, Kansas.

As a present my grandma spent hours and hours making a cross-stitch wall-hanging and she proudly presented it to my grandpa on his birthday. I guess his reaction was less than enthusiastic, which irritated my grandmother, given the hours she had spent making it. When she showed it to my dad years after grandpa had passed, grandma exclaimed, "I should have buried him with it!"

My father said Grandpa was very good at farming, with very straight rows and could put up miles of fencing well. He also said the farm "would never run out of water" because of where it was located over the Ogallala Aquifer. He loved nice cars, and would go and buy a new Cadillac every few years, much to my grandmother's annoyance (however, she continued owning Cadillacs the rest of her life, long after he had passed). I remember him taking me to see the house my parents were building, riding beside him in his brown El Camino.

Source Information

Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.

Original data: Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) Death File. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

1920 Census for Stafford County, Kansas

Source Citation

"United States Census, 1920," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MFXG-MXW : accessed 26 May 2012), William C Mccandless in household of Calvert C Mccandless, , Stafford, Kansas.

1930 Census for Rose Valley Township, Stafford County, Kansas

Source Citation

"United States Census, 1930," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/X77V-PNL : accessed 26 May 2012), William C Mccandless in household of Freeman W Toot, Rose Valley, Stafford, Kansas.

US Social Security Death Index

Source Citation

"United States Social Security Death Index," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JTS1-TYX : accessed 26 May 2012), William C Mccandless, 1987.