HARRISON,
Ark. - The
nation's oldest war veteran, William Joseph Moore of Harrison, died
yesterday in Boone County Hospital at the age of 108.
Mr. Moore, who also was the oldest
living Mason, was
honored by both the Veterans Administration and the Masons on his last
birthday, March 17.
"If you live long enough, you'll be
famous," the
former mail carrier and official of the old Boone County Telephone Co.
said earlier this year.
Mr. Moore enlisted in 1898 as a
private with Company K
of the Arkansas Infantry in the Spanish-American War and served as a
bugler. The unit trained at Chickamauga, Ga., but never saw action in
the brief war.
He was born in 1872 near the Newton
County community of Flat Rock. His parents moved from Tennessee to
Arkansas in the 1850s.
For 13 years, he delivered mail in a
horse-drawn
buggy. He entered the telephone business in 1914 and five years later
became manager of the company. He served as president and manager until
he was 100 and sold the company to Allied Telephone Co. in 1971. --Source: Boston
Globe, The (MA) - November 17, 1980.