Daughter continues Marine’s World War II promise

TRAER - With a dozen red, white and blue carnations clutched in her hand, against the rail of her walker, Vicki Abernathy cautiously makes her way across the grass past one tombstone after another.

She places the flowers at a well-weathered, greenish bronze marker for Hugh Wallace Breakenridge, a World War II Marine she never knew, and says a little prayer in her mind.

Vicki has decorated this grave for 20 years. It is a promise to her father, who himself had made a promise to Breakenridge nearly 70 years ago.

“We can honor these people who fought for us,” says Vicki, 63, of Vinton. “I wouldn't miss it for anything.”

As a child, Vicki felt differently about the annual Memorial Day visit to Buckingham Cemetery north of Traer.

“My brother and I hated coming out here,” she says. “In the first place, we had to be well-behaved. In the second place, we went to Breakenridge's and sat there in little chairs. We had to sit still. We didn't know why we had to come out here every year.”

Here's why.

In 1942, her father, Sgt. Bernard Schellhase of rural Vinton, met company commander Capt. Wallace Breakenridge of Dinsdale, in northern Tama County, in a Marine barracks in North Carolina. As soldiers who knew they'd be lucky to survive, they made a handshake pact.

If one made it out alive and the other didn't, the survivor would keep watch on the deceased's grave.

On Feb. 27, 1945, in the early days of the invasion of Iwo Jima, the men shared a foxhole. As Schellhase examined maps, Breakenridge stuck his head up to survey his troops. He was shot twice in the neck and died.

Breakenridge's body didn't make it back to Iowa until 1948. Schellhase had been honorably discharged in 1945 and was back to farming.

“I remember dad saying it was cold and snowy when they brought his body in,” Vicki says. “He wasn't sure he'd be able to get up here, but he did.”

That Memorial Day, Schellhase placed flowers on the grave. He saluted his fellow Marine.

Vicki Abernathy of Vinton makes her way through Buckingham Cemetery north of Traer to decorate the grave of World War II veteran Wallace Breakenridge. For 20 years she has continued to fulfill the promise made by her late father, Bernard Shellhase, to Breakenridge who was killed on Iwo Jima on Feb. 27, 1945. Photo was taken Tuesday, May 24, 2011. (Dave Rasdal/The Gazette)

Year after year Schellhase worked as a farmer and concrete finisher. He and his wife, Betty Jane, had two children and buried their only son, Ricky, in 1967 after a car accident. Schellhase's brother, Lowell, also a World War II veteran, had died, too. But, always, he fulfilled his promise to Breakenridge, even befriending his parents, Bill and Edith.

“Dad didn't even know these people existed until North Carolina,” Vicki says. “And the foxhole.”

On Memorial Day the families gathered in Dinsdale for dinner after the trip to the cemetery.

“I get a damned weird feeling every time I go there,” Schellhase said in a 1991 interview. “It brings back memories you'd like to forget.”

Hampered by emphysema and leg problems, Schellhase steadied himself on a cane to visit the grave with his family that Memorial Day. He placed flowers on the marker and gave his buddy one last salute. For, that Aug. 11, at age 74, he died.

“Well, this will be my last time up here,” he had told Vicki. Squeezing her 13-year-old son's hand, he said, “Would you continue to come up here, Michael? And your mom.”

Vicki, who graduated from Urbana High School like her father, was no stranger to honoring the dead. She had given birth to Michael, now of Madison, Wis., on Aug. 5, 1977, the same day her first son, Kirk, 6, died of leukemia. She had buried her brother, an aunt and an uncle. Her husband of 36 years, Steve, would die June 24, 2006.

Her father, a member of the American Legion, usually visited a half-dozen cemeteries every Memorial Day before arriving at Breakenridge's marker.

Vicki, because it is more difficult for her to get around since being diagnosed with cancer four years ago, makes her annual tour the week before Memorial Day. This year this was the third cemetery stop for her and Vinton friends, Nancy Long and Martha Long.

“Now I really treasure it,” Vicki says. “I think it's an honor that my dad started this tradition and that I can continue it.

“When I can't do it any more, Mike will continue the tradition. He wants it to go 100 years.”

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