By Tom Hintgen

Otter Tail County Correspondent

Each year ceremonies and personal visits from family members take place Memorial Day weekend to honor veterans at cemeteries throughout Otter Tail County.

One of those cemeteries is Pleasant Hill Cemetery just west of Dent and 10 miles southwest of Perham.

Among the veterans buried there is my late father-in law and father of my wife Sharon. Irvin Voigt, who died at the age of 64 in 1984, served as a member of the Army Air Corps during World War II.

He was born in Perham on June 7, 1920, and enlisted on May 7, 1942, working as a mechanic on fighter planes in the European Theatre. Irvin was honorably discharged from military service on Sept. 22, 1945.

The Army Air Corp later became the U.S. Air Force.

Also buried at Pleasant Hill Cemetery are Irvin’s brother, Julian, also a member of the Army Air Corps during World War II, and a son, Thomas Voigt, who served in the Vietnam War as a member of the U.S. Air Force.

Two other brothers of Irvin, Ted and Stanley, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.  

More than 16 million men and women served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, and another 3.5 million worked as federal civilian employees during the war.

As a note of interest, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had served as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, visited Glendalough near Battle Lake in 1952 when he was a presidential candidate.