I want to tell you a brief story about a true hero of our town, whose 100th birthday is today, October 21, 2022. It may not mean much in the larger lens of history, but as it’s his birthday I want to very briefly share it with you.

Kenneth Brodersen was born in a small cottage on his family’s farm west of Denison. He was the first of seven children born to Hans and Gertrude. He was raised on the 240-acre farm, attended country school, and attended Denison High School in town, at which time he lived with his grandparents in their house on 1st Avenue North (just above where Hy-Vee is today and just down the block from the current McHenry House/Crawford County museum).

Ken was tall and lean, of a slight build, but his father Hans who ironically was nicknamed “the Giant” in his days at Denison High School, raised his son to be tough and unafraid. The family tells of how Hans and Ken would wrestle in the front yard at the farm and, when Hans could, he would hoist Ken high above his head. In high school Ken participated in sports (nicknamed “Bearcat” for his time on the football team) and in several school plays in junior high and high school.

And while his grandmother was often upset that her grandson would lower himself to be seen in the billiards hall on west Broadway, Ken was not a seedy or “low” individual. Walking uptown with his slicked-down hair (his younger sister Gretchen stated that he used bacon grease), Ken nevertheless had a strong sense of right and wrong. Denison resident Howard McMinimee personally told of a Saturday afternoon when an older, larger boy was physically picking on a younger, smaller boy in the parking lot behind the drug store on Broadway (coincidentally, this would have been within sight of where Ken was living with his grandparents so he could attend high school, which was three blocks away from the house). Ken, who was smaller in stature and size than the bully, stepped in to stop the perceived injustice, and was told by the bully (paraphrased) to “stay out of this, this isn’t your fight.” Ken replied simply, “It’s my fight NOW” (emphasis in original) and the fight between the two older boys was on. Howard said that children running to watch the fight heard bones breaking from nearly a block away. Ken prevailed, although no other details of the fight are known.

After graduating high school in 1941, Ken enlisted in the United States Army, although the majority of Americans were pro-isolation and/or anti-war at the time. Initially stationed at Fort Hood in Texas, he joined a tank destroyer battalion and served in active duty in Europe. He was wounded on more than one occasion, including the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. He at one point had attained the rank of sergeant, but “respectfully requested” demotion back down to the rank of corporal. He was awarded the American Defense Medal, European African Middle Eastern Campaign medal, Good Conduct Medal, and the Purple Heart medal, among others (his official records burned in a building fire at the National Personnel Records Center in 1973 so a more complete accounting is not possible).

By the start of 1945 both sides knew that the war was going to end in an Allied victory, and Ken expected to come home and begin his civilian life, as millions of American G.I.s were also planning to do. Ken was engaged to a local girl, had begun sending money home and wrote his parents that he hoped to survive the war, return to Denison, get married and start a family. But on April 26, 1945, while serving with company “A” of the 773rd Tank Destroyer Battalion outside the town of Cham (about twice the population of present-day Denison) in Germany, Ken took a fatal round of heavy machine-gun fire to the lower abdomen, passing just above his hip bones and traversing left to right, puncturing several vital organs and causing an immediately-fatal wound. Ken died in the arms of a fellow soldier before litter bearers could even reach the scene. He had no last words.

While other soldiers and service members came home in 1945 to parades and well-deserved fanfare, Ken’s family would have to wait three and a half years for him to return. At 10 a.m. on an appropriately-cold December 8, 1948, Ken came home with a military escort, on the Chicago Northwestern train, in a box. Amos Sinn of the Sinn funeral home in nearby Schleswig, with whom Ken had communicated his final wishes for arrangements prior to leaving for military service, made his final preparations. His memorial service was held that same day, in the home of his grieving grandmother, in the same house where he had lived throughout high school. The Reverend A.F. Smith of the local Methodist church officiated the final ceremony. Ken’s fiancée, who was of a different faith, was forbidden by her own reverend from attending the service. Ken was interred at Oakland Cemetery and today rests next to his parents, surrounded by siblings, aunts, uncles and his grandparents. His headstone, as is typical of military members, is small and flat and perhaps easily overlooked as one passes by.

No one drafted Ken; despite the protestations of his family and particularly those of his grandparents, he chose to step off of the green grass of civilian life and directly into harm’s way, in a shooting war that many wanted to ignore in the hopes that it would fix itself.

. He was just a lanky farm boy who believed that the fight was more important than his own comfort, or his own safety or, ultimately, even his own life.

Ken’s story is not typical but it is also no so unusual…in different times, in different places, over the years and in different ways, many have fought and died and now rest in largely-unvisited tombs, covered by creeping soil that makes it easy for some to forget.

After today's and his centennial birthday it is doubtful that many will ever speak notably of Ken again, who died with neither wife nor child, and all of whose siblings have since passed away. So perhaps today we take a moment to take note of this native son, a decorated war hero who came from us, was one of us, and died serving and protecting people that he would never meet.

And here is to all the heroes whose names adorn the memorial on the front lawn of the Crawford County courthouse, and whose stories have never had the chance to be told. Maybe tomorrow we will forget, but today we have a chance to remember.

Contributed by Brett Brodersen.
Kenneth was his uncle, oldest brother to his father. Kenneth's parents were Hans V. and Gertrude Milburn Brodersen. His siblings were Barbara Brodersen Lingle, Gretchen Brodersen Hamlett, Hans V. Brodersen, and Richard Brodersen.