In this photo are my great-grandfather, Irvin John Koehnline (left) & his older brother, William Fox Koehnline (right; sometimes called William Frederick).They were the eldest two children of William Frederick Sr, a public contractor & official, & his wife, Rachel Fox Koehnline. The boys grew up in Bridgeport, Ohio, where they attended school before attending Kenyon College together. After graduating Kenyon, they went into the Army together for WWI. Though the details of Bill's service remain vague, he returned from the war with severe 'shellshock,' PTSD, & spent a number of years in an institution before being taken in by his sisters, who returned home to Bridgeport from their far-flung lives to take care of him. He lived with them the remainder of their lives, first at the Koehnline home in Bridgeport (giant brick house built during the Civil War along the banks of the Ohio River), & then, after the house was seized & demolished under eminent domain for a state highway, at their house in St Clairsville. My dad knew him growing up, & once said of him "though he barely spoke, I thought him a gentle, lovely man who had been through hell & not quite returned."
IJ survived, studied at the University of Paris after the war, worked for a research metallurgist, & then as a steel salesman in Wheeling, WV (across the river from Bridgeport), but preceded Bill in death by 15 years, thanks to stomach cancer.
