Under an engraving of a four-engine airplane and a cross, a polished granite memorial at Mountain View Cemetery in Ashland, Ore., reads, “In Memory of the Ashcraft Brothers.” They are identified as Navy Lt. Dean Bruner Ashcraft, Navy Lt. Kent Norman Ashcraft and Army Staff Sgt. Leland James Ashcraft. All three were killed in World War II.
Lynn Hasselman writes in the Ashland Daily Tidings, “Shouldering the burden of loss every day was former Ashland High School history teacher Norman Ashcraft and his wife, Ethel, who lost all three of their sons within a year.”
Their son Dean was a flight instructor at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. He and a passenger died on June 5, 1943, in an aircraft accident off the coast of Miami Beach.
His brother Kent was at the controls of a patrol bomber that disappeared on Dec. 27, 1943, on a flight from the Gilbert Islands to Baker Island in the Central Pacific.
Their brother Leland died fighting the Germans at Monte Cassino in Italy on Feb. 29, 1944.
Hasselman said that although the parents had moved to Canyonville, they requested burial next to their sons in Ashland.
Source: Hasselman, Lynne. "We Regret to Inform You: An Ashland family lost all three sons in WWII." Daily Tidings 21 Oct. 2015 [Ashland, Ore.] . Print.
