Company Clerk, C.H. Bennett of the Secret Valley CCC Camp captured this special service at the McKissick Cemetery in Secret Valley. While there is a photographic record of. the event, the details of what took place is not known.

They assembled at the grave of John Daniel McKissick, a World War I veteran who was buried there on March 17, 1936. McKissick was born on January 13, 1891 in Secret Valley, the eldest child of John Best* and Jennie Swain McKissick. The following is an excerpt from his obituary: “He was drafted in the infantry at the first call and his brother Wilbur Best McKissick enlisted in heavy artillery soon after he heard Johnny had been called. John was found on the battlefield of Argonne (France) by a first-aid nurse, lying among the dead, with a dead comrade laying across him, breathing but still bleeding from a shot over the heart and through the chest by an explosive shell or shrapnel which tore a large jagged hole through his left shoulder blade.

”Aid was summoned and he was carried on a stretcher. to a hospital tent, where he remained until he was able to be removed across the Channel to a hospital in England, where he lay for six weeks.”

John Daniel McKissick never fully recovered from his injuries. He would spend time on and off in hospitals and  when he passed away he had been in the Veteran’s Hospital, Salt Lake City. for a long time

Tim

*John Best “Buster” McKissick has the distinction of being  the World’s First Champion Cowboy.