Soldiers Grove Wisconsin
America's First Solar Village

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Did You Know? 

Soldiers Grove has its share of political and business leaders, heroes, artists and writers.  The village itself has been a subject of papers, books, and even a movie.

Here are a few:
 

Governor:  Wisconsin’s 21^st governor came from Soldiers Grove.  James Ole Davidson was born in Norway in 1854 and immigrated to the U.S. in when he was 18 years old.  He came to Soldiers Grove in 1877, started a successful mercantile business, and served two terms as village president.  A Republican, he served as state assemblyman from 1893 to 1898.  He rose rapidly in the ranks, serving as state treasurer from 1899 to 1903, and as lieutenant governor as the running mate of Robert M. La Follette.  Re-elected in 1904, he served in this position until La Follette resigned the governorship to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, making Davidson acting governor.  In 1908 he was re-nominated without opposition and served until January 1911.  He died in 1922 and is buried in Madison.

WWII Hero:  Soldiers Grove resident Beauford T. “Andy” Anderson joined the U.S. Army in 1942 and was assigned to the newly-activated 96^th Infantry Division.  Anderson received the nation's highest award for combat heroism for his actions on Okinawa in April 1945. Anderson, then a staff sergeant, was credited with single-handedly defeating a predawn Japanese counterattack against his unit.  On Memorial Day 1946, in a ceremony at the White House, President Harry S Truman placed the Medal of Honor around the neck of Technical Sergeant Anderson.

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WWII Hero: Eugene “Papa Gene” Moran enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in October of 1942 and served as a B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner.  On November 29, 1943, while on a bombing mission near Bremen, Germany, the tail section of his plane was shot off.  From 28,000 feet, and with severe gunshot wounds and a riddled parachute, Staff Sgt. Moran rode the tail section to the ground at the rate of 100 feet per second.  He survived the descent, but suffered a crushed skull when the tail hit a tree trunk.  Taken Prisoner of War, he was saved by a Serbian doctor, also a POW.  He was inhumanely incarcerated for almost 18 months, and endured a 600-mile forced march during one of the harshest winters on record.  He was liberated on April 26, 1945 and was awarded two Purple Hearts, the Air Medal with Gold Leaf Cluster, the European Theater Award, and the Good Conduct Medal.
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WWII Hero:  James O. Peterson received the Wisconsin Board of Veteran Affairs Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.  Born in Soldiers Grove, Peterson enlisted with the US Army in 1942.  After completing Officers Candidate School, 2nd Lt. Peterson served as an infantry platoon leader in Scotland, England, and France.  Promoted and transferred to Munich, his unit provided security to General  Patton's residence and Army HQ.  Subsequently, his unit provided security at the  Nuremburg War Crimes Trials.  Through the GI bill, Peterson obtained his Bachelors and Masters degrees and launched a 20-year career in parochial education.  He served on and chaired the Crawford County Board of Supervisors, served as Administrator of the Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles, and commanded the Wisconsin State Highway Patrol.
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War Chronicler:  What has been called one of the best memoirs of the Viet Nam war was written by a long-time resident of Soldiers Grove.  Rites of Passage: Odyssey of a Grunt (Badger Books, 1997) was written by Robert “Bullet” Peterson.  Joni Peterson saw that the book was published after her husband’s death in 1994.  Despite his struggles with post-traumatic stress syndrome and paraplegia sustained during the war, Bullet served a decade as Soldiers Grove village president and was active in Viet Nam veterans’ groups.

Poet:  One of America’s best-known poets lives on “a tidy farm at the end of a two-mile dirt road near Soldiers Grove,” except for the time he spends in the south of France.  Paul Zimmer finds both equally inspiring.  Author of over a dozen poetry collections, Paul has received two National Education Association fellowships, the Helen Bullis Memorial Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Crossing to Sunlight: Selected Poems (University of Georgia Press, 1996) is a substantial retrospective of his most famous work.  Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems (University of Georgia Press, 2007) won the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award in 2007.  His book After the Fire: A writer Finds His Place (University of Minnesota Press, 2002), offers observations on Soldiers Grove and Crawford County.

Movie Star: Film and television actress Agnes Moorehead resided in Soldiers Grove and taught school here as a young woman.  She also coached oratory, and her student team won numerous contests.  Best known for her role as Endora on the TV series Bewitched, she had roles in 75 films, including Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Johnny Belinda, and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.  She was born in 1900 and died in 1974.  Her fondness for the color purple earned her the nickname “Lavender Lady.”

Movie:  A film was made about Soldiers Grove in 1984.  The 28-minute documentary, called “River Town,” shows the transformation of Soldiers Grove from a flood-plagued community to the nation’s first solar town.  It won an Honorable Mention at the North American Association for Environmental Education Film Festival, and Library Journal called it “a good story of people working together to solve a problem.”