by Trish Rudder
A Great Cacapon man who served in the U.S. Army in the Korean War beginning in 1952 took a piece of home with him. Before he went into infantry training in Kentucky, Gene Kidwell put a pencil in his pocket before he left home.
That pencil stayed with him at each step of his journey from Great Cacapon to Kentucky to Seattle, where he boarded a troop carrier to Seoul, Korea. It was carried with him in all the forthcoming adventures Kidwell would experience.
Son Ronald Kidwell, said his dad Alvia Eugene “Gene” Kidwell was born on May 21, 1932. He graduated from Berkeley Springs High School in 1951. Gerald Ford, who later became U.S. President, spoke at his graduation.
Gene Kidwell was drafted in the Army in 1952 and fought in the war, Ronald said, and Private First Class Kidwell was wounded near Old Baldy Hill in North Korea in June 1953 with shrapnel in his back and hand.
“Men were killed around him,” Ronald said, and his dad was sent to a field hospital and then was transferred to a hospital in Japan where he received treatment for his shrapnel injuries.
“He still had the pencil,” Ronald said. 
After he healed, Gene Kidwell was returned to his unit in Korea. The war ended in July 1953. He was back on a ship from Korea with 2,500 Korean War vets returning to San Francisco. Ronald was told it was about 5,600 miles and would be an 11 to 16 day journey.
Kidwell finished his Army tour of duty in Ft. Knox Kentucky, Ronald said.
He was discharged and traveled on a bus from Kentucky to Hancock Md.
He then hitchhiked home to Great Cacapon with the pencil still in his pocket.
Back to his life in Great Cacapon
Kidwell married Delores Whisner in 1959. They had 11 children with nine surviving, Ronald said.
His dad built a 24×24 foot house and expanded it as the family grew. Kidwell worked locally his whole life at the sand mine and sawmill and retired as a Morgan County Schools bus driver.
A curious pencil stub
Ronald was about five years old when he asked his dad about a picture of him with his Army buddies.
“There’s the pencil that I carried in the war,” Kidwell said and pointed to the pencil stub that was on his dresser next to the photo.
Ronald became more curious about the pencil when he was a teenager. His mother kept the pencil in her keepsake box where it stayed and was kept safe from a full house of kids.
His father gently reminded them once to “put the pencil back in the box,” where it was stored.
Ronald’s mother died in 1989 but the pencil was still kept in her keepsake box. Years later, his dad married Irma who died in 2008, but the pencil stub was still safe in the small cedar box that came from Hunter’s Hardware his mother got when she graduated from high school.
Ronald said his dad had a connection with that pencil that he could not explain. His dad never said why it was special to him, but the family knew it was his keepsake and wanted nothing to destroy it.
His dad was not a writer and never kept a journal, Ronald said, but since he built his own house, he must have had to use a pencil to measure everything to fit correctly.
Kidwell brought other mementoes home from the war, including a knife and all his medals, especially the Purple Heart Metal he received for his combat wounds.
Ronald was interested in the other possessions,, but the pencil stub remained curious to Ronald and he wanted to keep it safe, as it was part of his father’s life as a young soldier in the war.
Gene Kidwell died in 2020. In the spring of 2021, when the kids were sorting out his possessions, Ronald said he was happy to learn the pencil was still in the box.
“And now that my father is gone, it’s in my possession to keep it safe. I was always so surprised it never got lost,” he said, of that small item’s journey across the globe.
