Danville’s well-known Civil War ties overshadow much of its other history. But one man’s World War II legacy has been unexpectedly preserved. - Cardinal News A Danville vet’s mementos from World War II are kept at the historical society

If you tour the Sutherlin Mansion in Danville, you will see the upstairs bedroom where Confederate President Jefferson Davis slept for one April week in 1865, when the small border city temporarily served as the capital of the Confederacy.

You can walk the streets of the River District, where the still-standing tobacco warehouses were repurposed as prisons for as many as 7,000 Union soldiers. And if you pass by City Hall, you’ll see a statue of Harry Wooding Jr., former Danville mayor and Confederate general, front and center on the steps.

Visitors from all over the country visit Danville for its Civil War history, for which it is well known, even earning the moniker “The Last Capital of the Confederacy.”

“It’s hard to veer off of the Confederate stuff in Danville,” said Joe Scott, archivist at the Danville Historical Society. “That’s our history, and we can appreciate it, but there is more.”

Much less prominent is Danville’s World War II history — there aren’t any historic mansions or prisons or statues in the city related to that.

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But if you look closely enough, you can find stories, or at least pieces of stories, about the Danville men and boys who fought.

The historical society has one object that offers a glimpse into such stories: a shadow box display of World War II materials, like medals, letters, photographs with handwritten descriptions, field manuals and dog tags.

It was assembled by a Danville veteran, Walter Tolbert, who left for France to serve in the U.S. Army when he was 20 years old.

Tolbert returned to Danville and then assembled the shadow box sometime after the war, but he never had any children to pass it down to.

That’s how, two years ago, it came to be in the possession of Jason Adkins, who donated it to the historical society.

Tolbert was Adkins’ wife’s stepfather’s uncle.

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“I came upon it when I was cleaning out a building that had belonged to him,” Adkins said. “I would’ve hated to get rid of it because he had taken the time to laminate everything and they were real deal medals because they were heavy.”

But Adkins and his wife had no connection to Tolbert and didn’t feel inspired to keep the shadow box themselves.

“He was somebody I didn’t really know,” Adkins said. “I hardly talked to the guy when he was alive.”

So Adkins called around to a few historical organizations, a Chatham group and the AAF Tank Museum, which has since closed, but was told that neither could take the shadow box, he said.

He eventually called the Danville Historical Society, and he said they were “enthused” by the item.

Robin Marcato, executive director of the historical society, remembers it a bit differently.

She recalls meeting Adkins while waiting in a long line at Starbucks and striking up a conversation about the historical society, which had just established its first physical location.

The group hadn’t started taking donations yet, Marcato said. She and her two newly hired archivists were swamped, trying to make heads or tails of a mountain of boxes that had previously been kept in a church basement, which served as storage for what was then a basically non-functioning historical society.

Because she was “overly chatty” in line, Adkins told her about the shadow box and offered to donate it, Marcato remembers.

Adkins disagrees, saying, “That couldn’t have been me because I don’t even go to Starbucks.”

Regardless, the shadow box has been kept at the historical society ever since and stands out as one of the few World War II items that the group has.

“We don’t see stuff like this often,” said archivist Joe Scott.

That’s partially because Danville is so entrenched in Civil War history, but it was also uncommon for returning soldiers to commemorate their time overseas in such a thoughtful way, he said.

“It was a really terrible thing to go through, and for somebody to produce something this well done, it’s interesting to see,” Scott said.

Scott’s grandfather was a World War II veteran, though he never talked about his time in the war and his family never had a memento like this, he said.

Marcato agreed. “My dad was in World War II, and we haven’t a scrap of anything,” she said. “He chucked it all.”

The wooden box itself is handmade, Scott said, and the small black and white photographs inside have messy handwritten notes on the back.

“It was done with such love,” Marcato said.

Medals and patches are displayed on a piece of fabric on the left side of the box, and newspaper clippings and correspondences are pinned across the rest of the corkboard backing.

“Walter Tolbert faced enemy fire in daring river rescue,” reads the headline of one article, which recounts how Tolbert was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

During an Ally-led assault near Thionville, France, enemy fire thwarted repeated attempts to cross a river, the article says, and soldiers had to use motor boats to transport reinforcements, food, ammunition and medical supplies.

“Tolbert, a tool room worker, operated one of the boats and despite a lethal hail of hostile artillery and mortar fire, fearlessly made repeated crossings of the river, evacuating the wounded and enemy prisoners on the return trips,” it says.

Also laminated are correspondences from Army officials, like Major General W. H. H. Morris Jr.

These letters are what stood out most to Adkins when he first saw the shadow box, he said.

“What struck me were the letters that were part of the collection,” Adkins said. “Commendations and letters from generals, presenting them with their praise.”

In the letter from Harris, he commends Tolbert’s division on its liberation of 100 square miles of France in just three weeks.

It’s unclear when Tolbert compiled the shadow box, Marcato said. There’s no way to tell if it was done right away or after years back at home.

And other than what can be discerned from the shadow box, Tolbert is a bit of a mystery, she said.

A search of his name on ancestry.com yields a little information.

He was born December 20, 1921, in Greensboro, North Carolina, according to his military registration card from 1941. He lived on Overbey Street in Danville with his mother and father before going overseas, and perhaps afterward as well.

Marcato also found a certificate of marriage from 1948, when Tolbert was 27, to a Lucille Delia Lyle, who was born in Henry County.

Besides that, “he’s a total mystery,” Marcato said. But she and Scott mused about how Tolbert must have felt and what he might have thought after returning to Danville.

“He was clearly really proud of this in a way that I think a lot of World War II vets weren’t,” Marcato said. “Could you imagine doing something so spectacular, and then you get back here and feel like nobody cares?”

It was likely a personal endeavor, Marcato said, since Tolbert didn’t have any children to inherit the shadow box.

“He did it to tell himself that he was a good person and he was important,” she supposed.

The United States saw a very prosperous period of time after the war, and Danville was no different, Scott said.

“They were building up a bunch of new housing for soldiers returning from overseas. Everyone was excited to be out,” he said. “Across from Averett [University], you’ll see newer-built housing over there, that’s why.”

While the historical society sees a lot of folks interested in Civil War history, few people come by looking for stories about Danville’s World War II ties, Marcato said.

“They assume there is nothing here,” she said.

The city has a few other commemorations of its World War II history, like a bridge named after Archer Gammon, a veteran who was buried in Danville.

Danville also housed some prisoner-of-war camps during the war, though very little is known about that, Scott said.

“I don’t think there’s too much out there about that,” he said. “There’s no photos we’ve seen. They tended to throw a lot of stuff away. That would be our only other little blip of World War II history fame.”

The shadow box is the most significant item related to World War II that the historical society has in its archives, Scott said.

“We don’t really have any other World War II stuff in here that I’ve seen,” he said. “This is unique in that no one’s heard of it, and it was one of our first donations.”

Adkins donated the shadow box at a time when the historical society was just getting off the ground and receiving few historical items from residents and other groups.

Today, the folks at the historical society receive lots of donations, allowing them to preserve items that may have otherwise been lost.

“It’s a shame” how many interesting pieces of history get discarded, damaged or lost when someone like Tolbert dies, Scott said.

Marcato said that she’s grateful to have the shadow box and a glimpse into Tolbert’s life.

“He was clearly wonderful, and it’s just such a bizarre way that we came to have this,” she said.

“If it were not for the fact that he was proud of it, we never would’ve known about him.”

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Grace Mamon is a reporter for Cardinal News. Reach her at [email protected] or 540-369-5464. More by Grace Mamon