Memorial Day honors Manchester paratrooper Donald Hoobler's Adams County roots
Corporal Donald Hoobler’s grave in Manchester ties Adams County Memorial Day to Easy Company’s D-Day jumps, Bastogne, and a hometown loss at age 22.
Memorial Day in Adams County still begins close to home, with names carved into stone and flags set at Manchester IOOF Cemetery, where Corporal Donald Brenton Hoobler rests. Born in Manchester on June 28, 1922, Hoobler was one of the county’s own long before Easy Company made him part of World War II history.
Hoobler grew up in a family marked by service and loss. He was the son of Ralph and Kathryn Hoobler, and his father, a World War I veteran, died while Donald was still a child. After graduating from Manchester High School, Hoobler joined the Ohio National Guard on Oct. 15, 1940. When the Guard was activated for wartime service, he was sent to Camp Shelby in Mississippi, then later enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 22, 1942, at Fort Thomas, Kentucky.
By then, Hoobler had chosen one of the Army’s most dangerous paths. He trained as a paratrooper and served with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Fellow Manchester natives Robert Rader and William Howell trained with him, and Hoobler was placed in the unit’s 1st Platoon. At Camp Toccoa, Georgia, under Captain Herbert Sobel, he took part in the punishing Currahee runs that became part of the company’s legend.
Easy Company went on to become one of the most recognized American units of the war. Hoobler jumped into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, then into the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. The 101st Airborne was holding Bastogne by Dec. 20 and 21, 1944, as German pressure tightened during the Battle of the Bulge.
Hoobler was killed on Jan. 3, 1945, at age 22. Some memorial records place his death near Foy, Belgium, and veteran-history sources say company medic Eugene Roe was at his side. His name later reached far beyond Adams County, including through Stephen E. Ambrose’s Band of Brothers and the HBO and BBC miniseries in which Peter McCabe portrayed him.
For Adams County families, Hoobler’s story still carries a local weight. He was not only a paratrooper in a famous wartime company. He was a Manchester man, buried back home at Manchester IOOF Cemetery, where Memorial Day remembrance links one hometown name to the larger history of Easy Company and the sacrifices that shaped the county’s public memory.
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