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Ernest A. Love, Post 6 American Legion Papers, SHM MS-28 1902-1998 (Bulk Dates: 1917-1921)

SHM MS-28

Biographical Note

Ernest A. Love was born on November 30, 1895, in Raton, New Mexico to Allan and Louetta Love. His father emigrated from Scotland in 1888, and worked for the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix railroad. Allan married Louetta ‘Etta’ Gregory (from Kansas) in 1892. In addition to Earnest, they had two sons that died in infancy; Francis Gilbert 1893-1894, and Robert Chester 1898-1899. The boys are buried in the family plot in Mountain View Cemetery, Prescott, Arizona. The family moved to Prescott in 1898, and lived at 527 (now 515) East Sheldon Street. After Ernest’s death they moved to Phoenix. Allan died April 30, 1937, and Louetta died November 30, 1946; they are buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Prescott.

Ernest Love appeared to have been very popular through high school. He was very musical and developed a love of acting which was demonstrated by his participation in many plays and musicals. He was a very good student, but also excelled in football, eventually being named to the Arizona Republican Second Line All State Inter-School Football team in 1912. Ernest was also involved in the Boy Scouts of America. After graduation from Prescott High School in 1914, he attended Stanford University to study mechanical engineering.

In his junior year at Stanford, Ernest filed an application to enroll in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at the Presidio in San Francisco. After completing training, Ernest and 15 others chose to go into the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He applied for pilot training and was sent to ground school at the University of California (Berkeley) and then to primary flight training in San Diego. After six weeks of flight theory, the students were given nine hours of training in actual airplane flying. Of the 15 who started, only Love qualified.

After training in San Diego, he traveled to New York for embarkation to France with the 141st Training Squadron. On December 26, 1917, he was discharged as a private first class and assigned active duty as a first lieutenant. After being sent to France, he received advanced flight training at Issoudun (Third Aviation Instruction Center). He was a top student in all his classes and graduated May 7, 1918. From Issoudun, he was sent to Furbara, Italy, for aerial gunnery training, which was a sixteen-day course. He flew twenty-two combat missions in seven weeks and although a victory claim was never filed, a former Commander wrote of the downing of a German Rumpler by Love. It was immortalized in the song ‘Wings of Liberty’ by Dixie Wadlington Matthie.

On September 15th, 1918, he prepared to take off with seven other planes on his twenty-second mission but was unable to start his engine, and the rest of the patrol departed without him. He got airborne and flew toward a rendezvous point, not knowing that the patrol had diverged from the normal patrol route. Arriving alone at Lachaussee Pond, he encountered a German fighter squadron and after a dogfight that drifted behind German lines, Ernest landed his plane near a church in the French village of Tronville, with a mangled left hand, forearm and knees. A French priest carried the badly wounded American aviator to a Tronville Church. Hemorrhaging and lacking proper care, Love died the following day and was buried in the church cemetery. Love’s parents were notified he was missing in action on October 6th, 1918. Finally locating his grave in February of 1919, the army disinterred his remains and reburied them at the St. Mihiel American Cemetery in France.

Allan and Louetta Love launched a campaign to have the army remove their son’s remains from France and transfer them to Arlington National Cemetery. It wasn’t until June 30, 1921, that Ernest Love was buried in Arlington. It took another five years for the Love’s to get the Army to replace the original grave marker with a headstone with aviator wings and the following inscription: “If I am to give my life for this cause, I am satisfied. There is no way I would rather go than serving my Country”.

Scope and Content

The collection consists of biographical and genealogical information, education records; primary through college, extensive correspondence (109 letters and telegrams) to family and friends, correspondence to Ernest Love’s mother regarding his death, photographs, sheet music composed by Dixie Wadlington Matthie in honor of Lieutenant Love, and a French aviation magazine with personal notations by Love. It also includes posthumous awards for bravery and gallantry signed by the president of France, Raymond Poincare; and another signed by General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I.

Also included are official squadron reports from September 1918, listing Ernest Love, together with the famous flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and Frank Luke, another Arizona flying ace, shot down during World War I. There is a letter from Stanford University inviting Love to membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a humorous letter that Ernest wrote to his girlfriend Helen in 1917, complete with illustrations.

The following additional related materials can be found in the Sharlot Hall Museum Library and Archives:

System of Arrangement

The collection is arranged in the following series:

Restrictions

Conditions Governing Access

None.

Conditions Governing Use

Unpublished and published manuscripts are protected by copyright. Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository and the copyright holder. The Sharlot Hall Museum may not own copyright to all parts of this collection. It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the State of Arizona and the Sharlot Hall Museum - this includes its Board of Trustee officers, employees, outside contractors, and agents from and against all claims made by person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Controlled Access Terms

Administrative Information

Custodial History

A majority of the materials found within this collection were donated by American Legion Post 6 to the Sharlot Hall Museum on September 23, 2003. These materials were originally processed and placed into a non-standardized arrangement and organization scheme in Document Boxes 76 and 132, and Photo Box po1077. The collection was reprocessed using a DACS compliant finding aid and placed into a standardized DACS compliant archival arrangement and organization scheme. A new DACS compliant number was assigned to the collection, SHM MS-28. On November 25, 2008, an accrual was donated by Lily Wright Budd; a letter from Louetta Love and a photo of Ernest Love in his airplane cockpit. No additional accruals to this collection are expected.

Preferred Citation

Ernest A. Love, Post 6 American Legion Papers, SHM MS-28. Sharlot Hall Museum Library & Archives.

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