12 | Saturday, November 9, 2024
HONORING OUR VETERANS
Forever young: Namesake of North Platte’s Legion post
per wrote. Rolfe, elected captain of brand-new Company E, led 31 men June 24 onto a Union Pacific train bound for training at Lincoln’s State Fairgrounds. They included two North Platte men well-known during World War II: Syd- ney McFarland, the city’s wartime mayor, and fu- ture Maj. Gen. Butler Mil- tonberger at the start of his career. Company E reached the border in mid-July at Camp Llano Grande at Weslaco, Texas. They thought in Sep- tember they were headed home — but it didn’t happen for five more months. That presented a problem for would-be County Attor- ney Halligan. “I have been informed by friends that the report is be- ing industriously circulated
by the opposition that I will be detained on the border until spring and that I will not be home to assume the duties of County Attorney should I be elected to that office,” Rolfe wrote in a let- ter the Semi-Weekly Tri- bune published Oct. 27. “I desire to state that this report is entirely with- out foundation and that if elected I will be on hand to assume the duties of the of- fice Jan. 1, 1917.” The letter helped P.R. unseat Gibbs by 254 votes. Granted a 45-day leave, he made it home Dec. 27 to take his oath of office — and then marry Kathleen Doyle in Lincoln on Jan. 18, 1917. Rolfe rejoined Company E on Feb. 7 at Bellevue’s Fort Crook, where his men had been sent after leaving the border. They finally went home
as February ended. But their break was short-lived: Con- gress declared war on Ger- many April 6. When North Platte held a patriotic rally six days later at Lloyd’s Opera House, County Attorney and Guard Capt. P.R. Halligan led the arrangement committee. Not much of a war A generation later, Gen. Miltonberger, Lt. Col. Den- ver Wilson and the men of Nebraska’s 134th Infantry Regiment would write a bloody, heroic 10-month record of valor across France, Belgium and Ger- many while helping to crush Adolf Hitler’s Nazi empire. The Great War wouldn’t be that kind of a war for Rolfe Halligan — or his brother.
sixth grade. He is wanted for skipping the laboratory periods and going to the of- fice to talk foot ball.” At the University of Ne- braska, P.R. Halligan be- longed to Phi Theta Delta fraternity. He received his NU bachelor’s degree in 1910 and law degree in 1912, then joined his father’s practice. He was appointed county attorney in brand-new Ar- thur County, then failed by 388 votes in 1914 to unseat Lincoln County Attorney George N. Gibbs. He tried again in 1916, nearly 1½ years into the European war. Rolfe was unopposed in the April Re- publican primary before an- other obligation arose. It would send 28-year- old Rolfe south, not east across the Atlantic Ocean. Guarding the border Mexico was engulfed in civil war in 1916. Rebel Gen. Pancho Villa, once an ally and now foe of Presi- dent Venustiano Carranza, was angry that the U.S. had refused to sell him weapons. Driven into the Chihua- hua mountains, Villa and his followers attacked Colum- bus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916. President Woodrow Wilson ordered 5,000 U.S. troops across the border in what proved a lengthy but futile chase Other soldiers would be needed to guard the border, The Telegraph reported June 19 — and they likely would come from North Platte. “Heretofore there has been some talk of organizing a local company of guards- men, and last night P.R. Halligan received a telegram from H.J. (Herbert) Paul of St. Paul, colonel of the Fifth (Infantry) Regiment, stating that North Platte would be allowed to fill the vacancy in that regiment if action were taken at once,” the newspa-
TODD VON KAMPEN todd.vonkampen @nptelegraph.com
Paul Rolfe “P.R.” Hal- ligan’s name and memory endure in North Platte a century after he served his country in World War I. Like North Platte’s air- port namesake Lee Bird, killed in a December 1918 plane crash, he survived the war but died too soon. American Legion Post No. 163, founded in 1920, was named the P.R. Hal- ligan Post five years after a sudden heart attack killed him at age 36. That post’s 50 charter members included Hal- ligan’s younger brother, Victor, the Nebraska Corn- huskers’ first football All- American before he served stateside during the Great War. It’s Victor Halligan, who died in 1973, for whom North Platte’s Halligan Drive is named. He donated the land just north of Inter- state 80’s frontage road that became Mid-Plains Voc- Tech, now called the North Campus of North Platte Community College. But “Rolfe” Halligan, also called “Hap,” was a popular four-sport high school ath- lete and young lawyer who led his local National Guard unit to war as World War II Canteen founder Rae Wil- son’s brother Denver would do a quarter-century later. When P.R. died in a San Diego hospital on Aug. 3, 1923 — a day after Presi- dent Warren G. Harding’s sudden fatal heart attack in San Francisco — the news shared The Telegraph’s Aug. 4 front page with news that Harding’s funeral train would stop in North Platte. A telegram about the death “fell like a thunder- bolt upon North Platte last evening,” the story said. “A letter from Rolfe received just the day of his death
COURTESY OF P.R. HALLIGAN AMERICAN LEGION POST 163
stated that he was improv- ing in health and hoped to leave the hospital soon.” He “was one of the citi- zens (of) which North Platte always felt justly proud, sacrificing all in time of war and (being) a leading spirit in other times,” it added. A favorite son P.R. and Victor were the only children of John J. Hal- ligan, who came to Nebraska with his Irish immigrant parents in 1868. Rolfe was born on Sept. 20, 1887, in Ogallala, where his father practiced law be- fore moving to Omaha. The Halligans settled in North Platte in December 1895. He captained the North Platte High School foot- ball team in 1904 and 1905, competed in baseball, bas- ketball and track and edited NPHS’ Round-Up yearbook the year he graduated in 1906. Rolfe’s entry in “The Se- nior Rogues’ Gallery” listed him as “one of the most notorious test-tube swip- ers in the laboratory. (He) hasn’t missed a visit to the office since he was in the Paul Rolfe “P.R.” Halligan (1887-1923) was the organizer and commander of North Platte’s Nebraska National Guard Company E during World War I
Please see HALLIGAN, Page 13
VETERANS HONORING ALL WHO SERVED
289-691-166 10/23
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