Army Induction — Douglas County

On the morning of Tuesday, October 21, 1958, Lauren Ekroth was among eight men who left from Douglas County Selective Service Board No. 17 at the federal building in Superior for induction into the Armed Services. The Evening Telegram listed his name and address — 915 Belknap St. — alongside seven neighbors. Coffee and doughnuts were served by the VFW Auxiliary. It was a routine small-town ritual of the draft era.

Ekroth was twenty-three years old, one year out of his master’s degree program and one academic year into his first teaching job at Richfield High School. He had spent the previous decade becoming an actor, a director, and a speech educator; now he was a draftee. After induction he completed basic training at Fort Carson, Colorado, and arrived overseas at a missile base near Vicenza, Italy in March 1959. The Selective Service card with his family’s Belknap Street address was the last administrative document to place him in Superior, Wisconsin as a resident. He would not return to the United States to live for several years.