Why did I take the time to create this feature about Ross Golden?
Since 1996, I've been using my web pages to ask for pictures and information about Manning's Veterans to add to the Manning database.
Then in 2009, I officially started the Manning Veterans' history book project, using my web pages and also promoting it in the Manning Monitor.
Unfortunately, I'm not getting much help and very few Veterans or the family members of deceased Veterans have come forward.
Fortunately, I've been going through a lot of Manning family collections and finding military pictures of a lot of Veterans and also finding other sources of pictures here in Manning for decades.

Generally Veterans and/or family members will work with me one on one to get their stories and scan their pictures, but most of Manning's Veterans are deceased and many of the living Veterans no longer live in Manning.
So with over 1000 Veterans to get information on, it is a very slow process by myself.

I also have run into obstacles where a few family members or Veterans don't feel it is important to publish a book on Manning Veterans.
I won't go into all of the reasons I've heard but this comment has come up a number of times by family members of deceased Veterans - "It is good enough for us to know that our father served, and no reason to put information in a book about him."

Obviously this is the right of anyone to refuse to provide information about a Veteran in their family, and for any living Veteran to choose not to be included in the future Manning Veterans' book, so I have to move on to the next Veteran to work on.

Ross Golden's story is a perfect example of why a book about Manning's Veterans needs to be published, so they don't get lost to time and eventually no one will know who served, fought, and died for our country - as a citizen of Manning, Iowa.

I'd like to remind everyone that this book is really about the Veterans of Manning in totality and the town's military history, and not about any specific individual who served, even though there will be over 1000 individuals featured...meaning that the purpose of the book is to honor Manning's Family of Veterans and not specifically about any particular family or family member.
So if you want a family member featured in the Manning Veterans book or are a living Veteran who needs help working on your story, please contact me and I'll do my best to help...

Ross Golden
Who is he???

He is 1 of around 100 of the over 1000 Manning Veteran names in my military database who I have/had NO information/pictures.

Well, thanks to the dedicated work by Connie Petersen and Ann (Voge), we now know a lot more about Ross and dozens more military men who served and who are connected to Manning's AMAZING history.

Click on the links to the left to see how difficult, tedious, and time-consuming it is to find information about so many "lost" Manning Veterans from WWI & WWII and then "connect those dots."