News Service

11-06-09

ISU Gold Star Hall ceremony honors fallen Korean War soldier from Fayette County

AMES, Iowa -- A Veterans Day observance at Iowa State University will honor seven former students whose names have been added to the Gold Star Hall, the war memorial in the university's Memorial Union. One was a soldier from Elgin, Robert Emory Dummermuth, who died in the Korean War.

Former students are eligible for name-placement in Gold Star Hall if they graduated or attended Iowa State full time for one or more semesters, and died while in military service in a war zone. The university has recently identified several who had not been identified in previous searches. As names become known, they are added to the wall and the soldiers are remembered in the Gold Star Hall Ceremony on Veterans Day.

Iowa State is able to memorialize Dummermuth on Veterans Day thanks to the help of his younger sister, Janita Loftus, West Union, who shared her memories. Loftus will attend the ceremony in Ames.

Dummermuth was born in West Union in 1927, lived on a farm near Elgin and attended country school. In 1947, he graduated from West Union High School and entered Iowa State in the fall. Dummermuth majored in dairy plant operations, studying soft ice cream and butter making. He was at Iowa State through winter quarter 1948. In 1950, he went into business with his father Emory and married Patty Bostrom. The following January, Dummermuth joined the U.S. Army.

As a corporal in Company B, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, he shipped out for Korea in 1951. He had just learned that his wife was expecting. Dummermuth died on Oct. 10, 1951, near Chorwon, North Korea, one leg of the war's "Iron Triangle." It is likely he died during operations connected with the fierce Battle of Heartbreak Ridge (Sept. 13-Oct. 15, 1951), in which casualties were high. The United Nations Command decided they were too high, and Heartbreak Ridge was the last major offensive conducted in the war, which ended in July 1953.

Five months after Dummermuth died, his son John Paul was born. For his service, Dummermuth will be remembered at Iowa State, with his name engraved on the wall of the Gold Star Hall in the Memorial Union.

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