Dubois County honors Private Roman Steltenpohl at Memorial Day ceremony
Private Roman Steltenpohl’s family received a plaque and wreath on Jasper’s courthouse square as Dubois County marked Memorial Day with countywide services.
On Jasper’s courthouse square, Dubois County veterans placed Private Roman E. Steltenpohl’s name at the center of Memorial Day remembrance, giving his family a special plaque and wreath as the county honored all deceased veterans.
The Dubois County Veterans Council hosted its annual Memorial Day observance Saturday, May 23, at the Courthouse Square. The ceremony ran from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Eastern time at the Dubois County Courthouse Veterans Memorial, POW/MIA Monument and Fountain, and included patriotic music, an honor guard and firing detail, a POW/MIA display and ceremony, and recognition honoring all deceased veterans. U.S. Congressman Mark Messmer was scheduled as guest speaker, and a meal followed from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Dubois County VFW Post 673.
Steltenpohl’s recognition gave the observance a personal focus. Born in Ferdinand on April 14, 1925, to Henry and Catherine Steltenpohl, he graduated from Huntingburg High School in 1943 before training at Camp Wheeler in Georgia and Fort Meade, Maryland. He was sent to England in May 1944, assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and landed in the first wave on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Military memorial records identify him as a private in the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and list his date of death as July 28, 1944. He is buried at Saint Ferdinand Catholic Cemetery in Ferdinand, keeping his service tied to the same county that honored him on the courthouse square.
The Veterans Council, which includes all veterans organizations throughout Dubois County, has long used the courthouse square and other county sites for Memorial Day observances. Cemetery services were also scheduled across the county on Sunday, May 24, and Monday, May 25, with flags placed on graves in communities beyond Jasper. The coordinated observance made the remembrance visible not only in one public ceremony, but across cemeteries and churchyards throughout Dubois County.
The plaque and wreath for Steltenpohl’s family underscored the purpose of the ritual: remembering a local soldier by name and linking that memory to the families and organizations that still carry it. In Dubois County, Memorial Day remained a public act of civic memory, centered on a Ferdinand-born soldier who went to war from a county school and never returned home except through the living remembrance preserved in Jasper and at Saint Ferdinand Catholic Cemetery.
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