Some Artifacts Are Gone, but Not Pride in a War Correspondent Who Mattered

No one comes by accident to Dana, a dot of a place that takes up less than half a square mile of Indiana’s cornfield sprawl. It has a bank, a tavern, a beauty parlor, a post office, an empty lot where the last grocery burned down, and 500 residents, maybe. Those who find themselves here have cause. The usual reason anyone not from Dana comes to Dana is to visit the Ernie Pyle museum. But if you have no memories of World War II, you may not recognize the Pyle name, which is a problem for Dana and too bad for you. Ernie Pyle, once a peerless war correspondent — the bard of the grunt — deserves your notice.

Two years ago, the state of Indiana cut the Ernie Pyle site loose from the government fold to save a little money; the attendance was too low and the site too remote, it said. But even before announcing its decision, the state very quietly relieved Dana of Pyle’s typewriter, passport and other choice artifacts, without so much as a courtesy call to the local group dedicated to honoring a neighborhood boy who made good. That local group, the Friends of Ernie Pyle, is now counting on donations and gift shop revenue to operate the site, which still has a lot to offer. If you’re lucky, one of Ernie’s friends — a farmer named Phil, maybe, or a beautician named Cynthia — will tell you the story of a native son once so beloved that Hollywood made a movie about him, as well as the hard-luck follow-up of the hometown museum that bears his name.