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Volume 062

THE OAK PARKER


PROMINENT, POPULAR OAK PARK MAN HONORED
THE OAK PARKER, Vol. 34, No. 25, Oak Park, Illinois
September 28,1918

Edgar Rice Burroughs, who has been appointed a major in the Illinois Reserve Militia, and assigned to the command of the First Battalion, Second Infantry, vice Otto McFeely, resigned was senior captain of the regiment and commanded Company A, an Oak Park unit. His connection with the local organization dates from the formation of the first Volunteer Training Corps unit, thus insuring to the officers and men of the First Battalion a commanding officer thoroughly familiar with the work and requirements of the command.

Major Burroughs is particularly fortunate in the possession of company commanders second to none in the slate service and in having these officers and their lieutenants a harmonious unit behind him. The enlisted personelle (sic) of his battalion is of an unusually high standard of intelligence -- the ranks are filled with business and professional men at the forefront of their vocations and of unquestioned social position in the community, while the members of his staff are of the same high type of citizen-soldiery.

With such factors of success and with any of Oak Park's and River Forest's best citizens giving him their active moral support there should be no limit to the high achievements of the new major and his command.

Major Burroughs was born in Chicago, educated in public and private schools there and at Andover, Mass., and Orchard Lake, Mich. It was at Orchard Lake that he received his first military training, having been four years a cadet at the Michigan Military Academy, graduating as second captain. The following year he was employed as assistant commandant and tactical officer and was also cavalry and gatling gun instructor. Later he enlisted in the Seventh U. S. Cavalry, stationed at Fort Grant, Ariz. His military training has all been under the regular army officers and West Pointers.

In January, 1900, he was united in marriage to Emma Hulbert of Chicago. They have three children -- Joan, Hulbert and Jack. The family is at 325 North Oak Park avenue. Major Burroughs is, by profession, a fiction writer, and is best known to the reading public as the creator of the now famous "Tarzan of the Apes"; but he has been many things besides -- soldier, storekeeper, department manager, cow-puncher and policeman among others.

His work with the Reserve Militia, which is only typical of that of every other officer of the battalion, should be a spur to those men who are eligible to membership in the organization, but who have never cared to make the slight sacrifice to this essential service to their state. For nearly a year and a half he has devoted so great a part of his time to this work as to cut down his output, and therefore his income 75 per cent. He sold his home at 700 Linden with the intention of removing to California permanently; but abandoned the idea through a sense of duty to his community and state, and, at great personal sacrifice and added expense, rented another home in Oak Park. He was also compelled to rent an office and employ a stenographer properly to administer the affairs of his company that he might have sufficient time to carry out his agreements with publishers.

If the officers of the Reserve Militia, who are in a position to know, consider the work of sufficient importance to warrant these sacrifices they can scarcely be blamed for feeling that every able-bodied man in Oak Park and River Forest should be enrolled in one of the local companies where the maximum sacrifice he would be required to make consists in purchasing a uniform and giving two or three hours a week to drill.

The Oak Parker urges every eligible man to support Major Burroughs by enlisting in his battalion.