Feb 1st 2026 is the 35th anniversary of the death of my paternal grandfather, Ken Starr. Ken Starr was born on 1/19/1919 and died on 2/1/1991.
He was the 2nd son of Ernie and Ina Holden Starr. Ernie and Ina had married in 1914 and their first son, Clifford, was born in July of 1915. Ernie registered for the draft during WW1 but was not called up. Ken was born in Rock Island, but the family lived in Monmouth at the time of the 1920 census. Ernie working as a polisher in an “oil can shop” Maple City Manufacturing. Ina’s mother Grace lived with the young family, working as a dressmaker from home.
The Peoria Directory in 1925 lists the family as living at 819 Ellis Ave in Peoria. Ernie still working as a polisher for Maple City Stamping. His parents, Emory and Ida are also listed at the same address.
The 1930 census shows them still on Ellis Street in Peoria’s 5th Ward, but without his parents in the house. Ernie’s no longer working as a polisher. He is a salesman, selling Life Insurance and Grace no longer lists an employment, but Ina is working now, as a seamstress for an apron manufacturing plant. This is likely the Chic Manufacturing Plant, most famous for their Princess Peggy house dresses, a line they started in 1929. The Chic Manufacturing building still stands on Adams Street in Peoria. Ellis Street no longer extends south of Main Street.
By 1935 the family had moved to Lincoln Avenue, still on the south side, right across the street from Manual High School. Grace died in 1933 so she no longer lived with the family, but Ernie’s step-mother, Ida, now in her 70s, who had been living alone in Monmouth after Emory’s death moved in with them. Ernie had given up selling life insurance and went back to work for the Maple City Stamping Company as a polisher. Sixteen year old Ken was attending Manual High School. His brother Clifford graduated in 1934, but remained in the family home.
The 1940 census finds 21 year old Ken still living on Lincoln Avenue with his parents, brother and 82 year old grandmother, Ida. He lists the highest grade completed as 3rd year of high school. He is working 40 hours a week as an apprentice at Caterpillar Tractor Company earning $1500 a year. That’s roughly equivalent to $36k now. Ernie and brother Cliff are working at Micro Products, Ernie as a polisher and Cliff as a machinist.
In May of 1941 he married 17 year old Clema Alberta Myers who was working at the hospital laundry along with her mother. Clema grew up in Peoria, attending St. Joseph’s School – located on what is now Richard Pryor Dr, living on Fisher Street, which is now a baseball diamond downtown.
Nine months later they had their first son, Larry, in February of 1942- just 3 months after the bombing at Pearl Harbor brought the US into WW2. They’re listed as living on Lincoln Avenue with Ernie, Ina and Clifford. The photos below were taken in the yard at the house on Lincoln, the old Manual High School in the background.
As a wedding present Ernie bought the couple a two room home in the brand new Sunnyland subdivision between Washington and East Peoria. The area was built to house families working at the Caterpillar Tractor Company. They worked to fix it up, remodeled and added to it a lot over the years.
In May of 1943 they welcomed their second child, Dennis. And the following year Ken was drafted into WW2. He began training at Fort Sheridan near Chicago in August of 1944. In November Clema and her mother were able to meet up with him in New York City before he shipped off to Europe. They took photos together in Central Park Thanksgiving of 1944.
Grandpa was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division. This Infantry Division had fought its way from Africa to Italy and was in France by the time Grandpa joined them. The division had reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, 26–27 November 1944 while Grandpa would have been in New York. “After maintaining defensive positions it took part in clearing the Colmar Pocket on 23 January, and on 15 March struck against Siegfried Line positions south of Zweibrücken. The division advanced through the defenses and crossed the Rhine, on 26 March 1945; then drove on to take Nuremberg in a fierce battle, capturing the city in block-by-block fighting, 17–20 April. The 3rd pushed on to take Augsburg where it liberated thousands of forced laborers from the Augsburg concentration camp, a forced labor subcamp of Dachau, and Munich, 27–30 April, and was in the vicinity of Salzburg when the war in Europe ended.[19] Elements of the 7th Infantry Regiment serving under the 3rd Infantry Division captured Hitler’s retreat near Berchtesgaden.” – Wikipedia
He took a lot of photos of bombed out Stuttgart in April 1945.
The 3rd division moved south towards the Bavarian Alps where they believed a well-fortified enemy would be found due to recovered Himmler plans. Nearly 70,000 troops descended and the fighting was limited. Grandpa snapped a few photos near Berchtesgaden in late May 1945. He noted on the back of the photos it was cold as hell even in late May. (all WW2 photos have had color added).
He then attended Military Police training in Troyes, France in June of 1945 before returning to post war Germany to serve as an MP until his discharge in March of 1946.
Grandma kept Grandpa’s return baggage ticket in a scrapbook.
After returning home Ken and Clema continued fixing up their home on Starr Ct in the new Sunnyland subdivision. Everything was done by hand, with the aid of family and friends, pouring concrete into cement blocks they expanded the home, adding a kitchen, building the cabinets and even attaching a garage. They added a bathroom, dug a basement and Grandpa even devised a hand crank elevator to travel from the kitchen to the basement and back for doing laundry. It was taken out later after Dennis and Larry inadvertently sabotaged it by taking some of the counter weight at an inopportune time as Grandma attempted to get on it with an especially heavy load of wet clothes. The elevator dropped quickly and the spinning hand crack gave Grandma quite a bruising. The elevator chute was closed up and a new washer and dryer was placed in the kitchen. Clema’s mother and her new husband had moved in next door, in a basement only home, her sister also lived nearby. The families often got together for family picnics, all the boys played together in the neighborhood.
Ken enjoyed fishing and went on fishing trips with friends often. The family also took fishing trips where they would stay in cabins near lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Eventually Ken and a couple of his fishing buddies pitched in together to buy land on Spring Lake near Manito where they built a small cabin. Shortly after he bought out the others and went about building a new home for him and Clema there on the lake. This time his sons Dennis and Larry were old enough to help with the construction. They built a house into the side of the hill, and installed a stairway into the cliff leading down the the lake where they built a small dock. They put up a an above ground pool in the backyard too. The walk out basement included a second kitchen. Their oldest grandson, David, lived with them often.
Grandpa Starr worked at Caterpillar for 45 years. I previously wrote this blog post about his work at Caterpillar Tractor Company. He started out without a high school diploma, an apprentice machinist and wound up a mechanical design engineer. He retired in 1981. Unfortunately soon after, Grandma was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1986. Grandpa continued living out at the house near Manito with his granddaughter, Kim also living there, until 1991. He died at St. Francis hospital in Peoria 2/1/1991 at the age of 72.