Lawrence Edward Breeze

Lawrence Edward Breeze, aged 94, died at Southeast Hospital on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. He was born on a farm outside Chillicothe, Missouri, June 3, 1922, the only child of Daniel S. and Clara Griner Breeze. He attended a one-room country school and graduated from Lock Springs (Missouri) High School. After induction into the Army at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in November 1942, he was sent for training with a field artillery battery that was part of the newly formed 13th Armored Division. Six months later he was admitted into the Army Specialized Training Program to study engineering. He spent three terms at the University of New Hampshire. A few months before D-Day in Europe, the engineering part of ASTP was terminated, and he was sent to the 78th Infantry Division in Virginia, where he joined one of three infantry regiments, the 311th. In the fall of 1944 the 78th embarked for Europe. On Dec. 9 his regiment was sent into action in a heavily forested part of Germany, a few miles from the Belgian border. Exactly a week later, the Germans launched what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The 78th had seized an area vital to German supply, and the division was ordered to hold at all costs. It was costly in casualties, but the 78th held the far northern shoulder of the Bulge. On Jan. 31, 1945, Breeze received the Combat Infantryman Badge, something that remained a source of great pride for the rest of his life. On March 9, his company crossed the Rhine on the bridge at Remagen. He was awarded the Bronze Star medal for action at Honnef, Germany, on March 11, 1945. Later he received a second such medal to be displayed as an oak leaf cluster on the ribbon of the first Bronze Star. In addition, he was awarded three small bronze battle stars to affix to his European Theater ribbon to designate the Ardennes (the Bulge), Rhineland and Central European campaigns. He came home with the 29th Infantry Division and was discharged at Jefferson Barracks in January 1946. Many years later, he wrote an account of his war years for the benefit of his children. In 2009 the Regional History Center at Southeast Missouri State University published his account as a book: ³From Farm to Front, An Innocent Goes to War, 1942-1946.² He was always grateful to the army for giving him a good start in higher education and deeply appreciative of the G.I. Bill that enabled him to get an undergraduate degree from Missouri Valley College at Marshall, as well as master and doctoral degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He began a 40-year teaching career at Mayview (Missouri) High School and continued with a teaching assistantship (later half-time instructor) at Mizzou. His first full-time college position was with Jacksonville Junior College in Florida (1952-56). There in his first class he met the young woman who would become his cherished wife and life-long companion, Alice Elizabeth Miller. They were married at St. Paul¹s Episcopal Church in Jacksonville, March 25, 1955. He took an active part in the transition from J.J.C. to Jacksonville University and sponsored the first graduating class in 1959. He was named Professor of the Year in 1965. He came to Southeast Missouri State University in 1966, where as professor of history, he taught courses in Western Civilization, Modern Britain and 20th Century Europe. His specialty was the Victorian period, and in 1994 he published a well-received book on ³The British Experience with River Pollution, 1865-1876.² He was the third professor to teach in the Missouri London Program (1984). His last few years at Southeast, before retiring in 1989, were made especially pleasant by his association with students in the history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta. He was always very proud that his children followed in the professional paths of their parents: teaching and librarianship. While living in Jacksonville, he was active in the Arlington United Methodist Church, serving as lay delegate to the Florida Annual Conference and also as an officer in the Conference Historical Commission. He was a member of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau. His great interest in Methodism led to some writing and publishing on Methodist topics. Until recent years, he and Alice spent their winters on St. Simons Island, Georgia, an opportunity for him to visit the areas where John and Charles Wesley lived in the 1730s. In earlier years at Centenary UMC, he taught 5th- and 6th-grade Sunday School and served two terms as president of Methodist Men. He enjoyed traveling, and after Alice¹s retirement from Kent Library in 1992, they took several bus and train trips and a few cruises. In 2000 they sailed to Europe and spent the summer there. When physically no longer able to travel, he enjoyed reliving these experiences through the journals and scrapbooks Alice prepared. He was preceded in death by his parents and is survived by his wife Alice; daughter and son-in-law, Alison Jean and Michael Guy Mead of Lake City, Georgia, and son and daughter-in- law Daniel Miller and Christel Striggow Breeze of Hohenfels, Germany. Visitation will be Monday, October 10, 2016 from 4 to 6 p.m. at Ford and Sons Mount Auburn Funeral Home. Interment will be at a private service at the Missouri Veterans Cemetery at Bloomfield at a later date. In lieu of flowers the family suggests that memorials be made to the Breeze Graduate Scholarship in History or the Breeze Library Endowment for History, administered by the Southeast Missouri State University Foundation.

Tributes

Lawrence Edward Breeze

June 3, 1922 - October 4, 2016