Ol'Harry

KNIGHT FAMILY MADE ULTIMATE SACRIFICES IN WW II

Columns sometimes end in cemeteries -- this column began in a cemetery -- during a recent Dr. Max Carter-led tour of the New Garden Friends Meeting Cemetery.  Carter mentioned the tragic loss in 1943 of almost an entire family when a military airplane crashed into their Guilford College home.

WW II BROUGHT CASUALTIES TO THE HOME FRONT TOO -- CORNELIA KNIGHT LOST HER MOTHER, TWO SISTERS, AND ONLY BROTHER

For a writer about veterans, that begged further investigation.

World War II was raging in 1943, but Oliver Knight, of Route 1, Guilford College, North Carolina did not figure to send anyone from his Quaker family off to the war.  Demographics, as much as his Quaker faith, gave him this assurance. 

His household included a wife, three young daughters, a seven-year old son, and an adult sister – hardly a cache of conscription candidates.

As a Greensboro mail carrier, Knight surely kept up with the war.  He knew the Marines had secured Guadalcanal; that Army Air Forces were pounding Nazi-occupied France and Germany; that General Patton’s troops had secured Sicily; and the Allied Invasion of Italy was underway.

While his neighbors along Oak Ridge-Guilford College Road were sending family members off to the war, no one from Oliver Knight’s family would be going.

As ironic as it was tragic, World War II came to the Oliver Knight family -- a U.S. Navy fighter plane crashed into their two-story frame house on Monday afternoon, September 14, 1943.  Next door neighbors heard the explosion and said the house enveloped in flames and dense smoke in seconds.

According to the Greensboro Daily News, “The fighter plane clipped a tall pine tree 150 yards to the rear of the Knight home, plowed through the garden and wire fence, entered the kitchen and blasted through the building to the front room.”

Killed instantly in the burning inferno were Mrs. Oliver Knight, her 19-year old daughter, Wilma, her 11-year old daughter, Dorothy, and her seven-year old son, Oliver, Jr.

SAD DAY FOR QUAKER FAMILY OF KNIGHTS AND QUAKER FAMILIES
OF NEW GARDEN FRIENDS MEETING

Oliver Knight’s life was spared because he had momentarily stepped from the house to gather fruit from his grape arbor.   His sister, Louetta Knight, survived by climbing out a window onto the roof of the front porch, where neighbors helped her down. 

DESPITE TRAGIC LOSS OF FAMILY MEMBERS, OLIVER KNIGHT HAND-CRAFTED
THIS POSITIVE FRAME OF MIND 

His 17-year old daughter, Cornelia Knight, a rising sophomore at Guilford College, escaped through a broken window on the first floor – they were treated and released from St. Leo’s Hospital.

Navy LT (JG) Marshall W. Mathiesen, 35, of Oakland, California was identified by the newspaper as pilot of the fighter plane.  His mangled body was found on the front lawn of the Knight home – he left a wife and four-year old son.

Mathiesen was attached to the Ferry Division at Floyd Bennett Field in New York City and thought to be ferrying a new fighter plane to Atlanta.  Witnesses said it sounded as if he had engine problems.  He had been cleared to land at Greensboro-High Point Airport, but crashed before he was able to land.

It was further speculated the pilot was making a desperate attempt to crash land in an open field across Oak Ridge-Guilford College Road from the Knight home.

Wilma Knight, 19, the oldest Knight daughter, was ironing on the back porch when the plane hit.  She had worked at Pilot Life Insurance during the summer and was just days away from entering Guilford College as a rising junior, majoring in sociology.

Dorothy Knight was a fifth grader and Oliver Jr. a second grader at Guilford School.

The Knights were active members of New Garden Friends Meeting, where the mass funeral was held.  One casket held the charred remains of the mother, two daughters and a son. 

Oliver Knight Sr. died on January 17, 1974 and is buried alongside his family.

The Knight sisters had been day students at Guilford College, but after the tragedy, Cornelia lived on campus, “Being among students was a tremendous help in keeping my mind off the tragedy,” she recalled recently from her apartment at Friends Home Guilford.

“I majored in English and even though I wasn’t keen on teaching, I did get a teacher’s certificate.  I taught English at Guilford High School my first year and later switched to the seventh grade – by then I was absolutely in love with teaching!” 

HER CHEERY PERSONALITY KEEPS HARMAN'S CHILDHOOD LOSSES BELOW THE RADAR OF MOST OF HER FRIENDS HOME GUILFORD NEIGHBORS

Many of her teaching years were in Mount Airy, the home of William Albert Harman, whom she married in 1947.  The Harmans first owned a Western Auto Store and later built and operated a grain mill until they retired to Sebring, Florida.  He died in 2001.

The Harmans had two sons, two grands, and five great-grandchildren.  At least some from this list are in line for minutely cross-stitched Christmas tree ornaments, crafted in love over the summer by the Oliver Knight family matriarch – named Cornelia, now 90, in honor of her grandfather, Cornelius, who managed the Guilford College Farms.

CORNELIA KNIGHT HARMAN'S GRANDS & GREAT-GRANDS KNOW SOMETHING
CRAFTY AND UNIQUE WILL COME THEIR WAY ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS

Louetta Knight lived in spinster-hood until age 67.  She married John Gurney Gilbert on February 26, 1961 – he was 84.

World War II casualties were 291,557.  At least four more should be added – the Quaker Knights from Route 1, Guilford College, North Carolina.