Generations of Hillers

Johan Adam Hiller — The Harness-Maker

One of the best-known and most prosperous of Tyrone’s first citizens was Johan Adam Hiller, a German immigrant. He had the distinction of being the earliest harness-maker in the area, settling in 1855. Johan was a son of Johann and Louise Mary (Reichle) Hiller and was born August 1, 1829 in Wurtemberg, Germany. One of fourteen children, Johan and two of his brothers emigrated to America: Johan to Pittsburgh, Isaac to Houtzdale, and Martin to Marion, Ohio.

At the age of nineteen, after receiving a good German education and learning the trade of saddler and harness-maker, Johan left his homeland and made his way to Pittsburgh, where he worked at his trade as a journeyman until 1855. He then moved to Tyrone and engaged in the harness business. For thirty-seven years he applied himself closely to his business, becoming very successful. Johan accumulated considerable property and built the Hiller block, on Pennsylvania Ave. In 1872, the frame building was replaced by the present brick structure.

On May 6, 1851 (or 1852), Johan married Margaretta Braun (originally of Pfeffelbach, Prussia), who died on her fifty-fifth birthday — February 7, 1892. To this union were born seven children: a stillborn son, Wilhelmina, William Frederick, Mary Ann, Henrietta, Anna P., and John.

Johan served as a member of the Tyrone Borough Council and of the Tyrone School Board. He was a charter member of the First English Lutheran Church and a charter member of Tyrone Lodge No. 52, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, serving as treasurer for thirty-six years. He died January 4, 1910, leaving behind eighty years of a useful, well-spent life.

William Frederick Hiller and the Insurance Agency

Johan and Margaretta’s son, William Frederick Hiller was born in Tyrone on May 28, 1856 and died May 11, 1919. In 1892, he founded The W. F. Hiller Insurance Agency, at 970 Pennsylvania Ave. William married Sarah Esther Valentine, of Tyrone, on May 24, 1892. Sarah was born in Altoona on July 14, 1872 and died on November 27, 1959.

In the 1897 book, Tyrone of Today, by Rev. W. H. Wilson, the insurance agency is referred to as “W. F. Hiller, in Hiller block, takes risks on both property and life in sound companies.”

Apparently, Sarah was the driving force in establishing and running the business. Originally, the office was located in the front room of the second floor, while John Hiller’s harness store continued to operate on the first floor until 1895. The family-run insurance/real-estate business has been in continuous operation in the same building since 1892, making it the oldest business now in the Borough of Tyrone.

William and Sarah had nine children: Susan Esther; Mary Margaretta (twin to Esther); John A. Hiller; Frederick Valentine; William Finney; Helen Wilhelmina; Anna Henrietta; Karl Edgar; and Robert Clark.

On August 24, 1920, son John A. Hiller, who continued to manage the family insurance business, married Rosalie Jean Black. They gave birth to a son, John Allen Hiller Jr., on October 7, 1921 — the Hiller descendant who is one of the subjects of this mini-bio. On June 14, 1932, John Sr. remarried — to Emaline Wylie Piper.

Jack Hiller — Boyhood, CMTC, and Pearl Harbor

John Jr., better known as Jack, was born in the third-floor apartment above the insurance office on Pennsylvania Ave. and was reared during the years of the Great Depression. During his boyhood years, Jack reached the highest level of achievement as a Boy Scout. He still proudly possesses the Eagle Scout badge that he was awarded.

At Tyrone High School, on Lincoln Ave., Jack met Miriam Elaine Boal in a French class. (Jack jokingly says they both still speak French fluently!) Miriam was born in Tyrone on February 5, 1923 to Winfield Scott Boal, of Clearfield, and Alice Lenna (Hooven) Boal, also of Clearfield. Miriam, known as ‘Tiny,’ lived with her family on Hamilton Ave. Her father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a brakeman/conductor; her mother was a stay-at-home mom. After Miriam graduated from high school, she worked as a clerk at Gardners Candies, near the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and 10th St.

During two summers while Jack was in Tyrone High School, he participated in the CMTC (Citizens’ Military Training Camp) at Fort Hoyle, Md., which was involved in field artillery. The CMTC program was the brainchild of Gen. John ‘Black Jack’ Pershing. Jack remembers the horses that pulled the caissons along with 75-mm guns. He had to clean and curry the horses, too. Jack then made up his mind that he didn’t want to be part of a field artillery unit. The CMTC program was phased out in 1940 due to the onset of World War II.

After high school graduation, Jack went on to study at Penn State, where he participated in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). But during his freshman year, the naval station at Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. The attack inspired Jack to enlist. After finishing the school year in June 1942, he traveled to the post office in Pittsburgh to enlist in the Marine Corps, only to be rejected because the arches of his feet were too high.

On his way out, Jack stopped down the hallway to an office where the Army Air Corps was recruiting. He passed the exam, but there weren’t enough training facilities at that time to take everybody. Jack then took employment with the Pennsylvania Railroad at the East Altoona shops, wiping engines, “cleaning fires,” and other odd jobs.

Bombardier in the 398th Bomb Group

Eventually, in early January 1943, the Army Air Corps called Jack to be activated with the Air Cadets in Nashville, Tenn. He was sent to preflight school at the Western Flying Training Command, in Santa Ana, Calif. and then on to primary flight school, in Blythe, Calif. Circumstances didn’t work out for Jack and he ended up at bombardier school in Roswell, N. Mex.

After becoming a bombardier graduate, Second Lieutenant Jack Hiller earned ten days’ leave en route to Salt Lake City. During this time, he returned home to Tyrone and married his high school sweetheart, Miriam, on November 1, 1943.

Leaving Miriam behind, Jack traveled to Salt Lake City, where the Air Corps formed flight crews. He became part of the 398th Bomb Group assigned to Rapid City, S. Dak. When Jack got paid, he sent for Miriam to come to Rapid City. The B-17 the crew flew sported the moniker “Tailwind,” along with a Marilyn Monroe-like cartoon. The four engines were painted with the names of the wives of the pilot, copilot, navigator, and bombardier: Darlene, Sophie, Annabelle, and Miriam.

In the latter part of March 1944, the group of B-17s flew to Maine, Labrador, Iceland, and Northern Ireland on their way to the 8th Air Force Base, at Royston, England. Soon, Jack’s crew began bombing missions over enemy territory.

Shot Down Over Hamburg

Their fifteenth combat mission consisted of bombing oil-storage facilities in the Hamburg harbor area; however, their B-17 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from German guns. The crew was ready to bail out, but was told not to. At first, it was thought that the aircraft might make it across the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden, but the whirling altimeter indicated otherwise. The crew was told to prepare for a crash-landing.

One of the four engines was burning, and another had a propeller hanging askew. And all the hydraulic systems were hissing like a steam locomotive. Fortunately, the pilot belly-landed the aircraft in a grain field, which acted as a cushion. A couple of farmers’ fences were taken out, but the crew survived. The top gunner, Gib, had a superficial flak wound in his head, but no one else in the crew received any flak wounds.

The crew decided to break up in pairs, with Jack and the navigator taking off together. The pair had the delusion of trying to reach a Baltic port, sneak onto a boat, and get to Sweden! But the German army knew their whereabouts. After a couple of hours, they heard guttural voices followed by the appearance of several guns pointed at them by German infantry troops. The pair was paraded off on a dirt road to a jail in the nearby town of Dahlenburg.

When the eight remaining crew members were gathered together again, they were transported to the Hamburg rail station, where Jack saw some unhappy German citizens glaring at them against a background of damaged buildings. In the custody of German army guards, the POWs were boarded onto a train for Frankfort am Main, where they were grilled at the Dulag Luft interrogation center. After interrogation, the crew was moved on railway box cars to Sagan, halfway between Berlin and Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) in eastern Germany. Located here was Stalag Luft III.

Stalag Luft III

Beginning June 27, 1944, Jack and the rest of the crew occupied the South Compound. The South Compound consisted of fourteen barracks of wooden, single-story construction. A center hallway divided the rooms that were equipped for six men. The six men to each barrack room grew to eight, then sixteen. A coal-burning stove stood on a concrete base in the corner of the room.

The compound was enclosed by a ten-foot-high, double-barbed-wire fence. A guard rail, or warning rail, about twenty feet from the fence, outlined a forbidden zone. Any POW in this “death zone” would be shot immediately. Guard towers (“goon boxes”) stood just outside the barbed wire. At night, the barracks were locked and the shutters closed, and police dogs ran free in the compound.

On March 24, 1944 — three months before Jack and the crew entered the camp — seventy-six British POWs had escaped from the North Compound; later, seventy-three were captured. Upon Hitler’s orders, fifty of the escaped officers were shot. The film The Great Escape, released in 1963, depicts that breakout.

The Germans had allowed the POWs (known as “Kriegies”) to build a theater. About 400 theater seats were made from Canadian Red Cross boxes. At 9:30 p.m., January 27, 1945, the men in Jack’s barracks were viewing the play, You Can’t Take It with You. The presentation was interrupted by the American camp commandant who came on the stage and announced that the Germans said the men had thirty minutes to get ready to evacuate the camp. (For weeks, the men had anticipated the order to move because the Russian troops were advancing from the east.)

On this very cold night, with drifting snow, 2000 POWs started on a two-day march to a town called Spremberg. The men were herded onto forty-eight locked box cars — fifty men to a car! — and transported south to Stalag VIIA, a large POW camp in Moosburg, not far north of Munich.

Nearly three months later, on April 29, 1945, the POWs were liberated by the 14th Armory Division of General Patton’s Third Army. When an American tank crashed the fence and rolled into the camp, it finally was all over. Then, the Americans hastily hauled down the German swastika flag at the camp’s gate and hoisted the stars and stripes.

From Moosburg, the men were transported in trucks to a German airfield and then flown to a redeployment depot for returning POWs called “Camp Lucky Strike.” Eventually, the men were put on a ship, the SS John Erickson, at Le Havre, France, which arrived in New York Harbor on Memorial Day 1945. There were flags all over the ship, sirens were blasting, and fireboats were spraying water. It was the first convoyed ship of servicemen to arrive in the United States after V-E Day.

After the War

For Jack, it was to Fort Dix, N.J. for more processing. During the War, Miriam had been staying with Jack’s aunt, Ann, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. She was employed in the accounting department at Leeds & Northrup, a defense plant.

Toward the end of Jack’s leave, the couple purchased from Mark Motors, in Philipsburg, their first car — a 1936 Ford convertible for $350. They drove this car to Miami Beach, Fla., where Jack was to be reclassified. Jack received orders to report to Midland, Tex., where he performed duties as a bombardier instructor for young Chinese Nationalists. After a while, Jack realized the gradual obsolescence of a bombardier and transferred to the Security Division, Military Air Intelligence.

Jack finished his active military career as an Air Force intelligence officer at the Air Matériel Command, in Middletown, Pa. and in the 11th Air Force, in Harrisburg. In October 1948, 1st Lt. Jack Hiller was released from active service at Fort Slocum, N.Y.

The couple returned to Tyrone and rented Jack’s father’s third-floor apartment above the insurance agency. After passing the State exams, Jack joined the real-estate and insurance business with his father. In the meantime, Jack became active in the Air Force Reserve, in which he served for sixteen years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

The Gardner Guards and Tyrone Life

In 1949, Jack took part in reorganizing the original (World War I) drum and bugle corps of the Howard Gardner Post 281 of the American Legion. Later, while still sponsored by the American Legion Post, the name was changed to Gardner Guards. Some of the members were Mark Laird, Rich Searer, Morris Levine, Elmer Johnson, Joe Dickson, Zilian Rumberger, and Jack Clark. Jack played the bugle. The Gardner Guards were very active in the 1950s and ’60s.

Jack and Miriam started building a home up on Laurel Drive, with great views of the town below and of the Allegheny Front. Doing most of the construction themselves, they started digging the ditches for the footers in November 1951. They had help with the electrical installation by Miriam’s brother-in-law, Bob Brower, and with the plumbing installation by her brother, Ronnie. Miriam stained all the interior woodwork. After working on it for more than two years, they moved into their new home in March 1954.

Jack was raised in the First Presbyterian Church of Tyrone, and Miriam transferred from the Methodist faith in 1945. Jack has been Sunday School secretary for nearly forty years. Both have been active in local organizations: Jack in the Kiwanis Club of Tyrone (club president in 1967), the VFW, Moose, Elks, and the Masonic Order. He served on the boards of the First Blair County National Bank, the Tyrone Hospital, and the YMCA, and as president of the Tyrone Area Chamber of Commerce. Jack joined The Benedicts, a social club, in the late 1950s and recently retired as treasurer after twenty-five years.

Children

The Hillers’ three children are John Scott (b. June 8, 1951), Nancy Jane (b. January 22, 1954), and James Boal (b. September 11, 1964). Scott attended Grove City College and received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. Lt. Col. Scott recently retired from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard and now is an “ordinary Tyroner” working in the family business. Nancy attended Washington & Jefferson College and the University of Hawaii, then earned a master’s degree in art at George Washington University; today she works in the Loyalsock School District, signing for deaf students. Jim entered the Worcester Polytechnic Institute at the age of sixteen and now lives in Virginia, serving in the Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Jack and Miriam Hiller celebrated sixty years of marriage on November 1, 2003.