World War I dog tag finds a home in Chula Vista
Watching “Jeopardy!” each weeknight has long been a tradition for San Diego native Dick Roppé and his wife, Lynn. When they were viewing the quiz show’s Teachers Tournament last June, the telecast raised one question for them that wasn’t answered.
What was so familiar about the competitor from Virginia — a high school band and choir instructor named Will Satterwhite Jr.?
It soon dawned on Roppé that he possessed a dog tag, military medal and other memorabilia that belonged to a World War I soldier named Gilbert H. Satterwhite. These items had been passed down by his grandfather’s second wife, Helen Eggers Satterwhite, who was Gilbert’s widow.
With that last name, could Will and Gilbert be related, wondered Roppé. If they were, it would be nice to get the items back into the hands of an actual family member.
So Roppé began an investigation, first by tracking down the “Jeopardy!” contestant using information given out about him on the show. He found an email list of Will’s Liberty High School faculty in Bedford, Va., and sent a query to the teachers. Eventually a counselor responded and agreed to relay the message to her co-worker.
Will contacted Roppé, explaining that he wasn’t aware of being related to Gilbert Satterwhite but said the person to ask was a Chula Vista man named D. Marshall Satterwhite, who has taken a deep dive into the extended family genealogy.
Roppé did just that. He says Marshall was pleased and excited that he had taken the time to search for a Satterwhite relative.
Roppé also had tracked down Gilbert’s Kentucky birth certificate, draft card, military record, death certificate, grave marker and 1940 census data that included the name of Gilbert’s wife, Helen, who later became Roppé’s step-grandmother.
Over the years, Marshall has compiled a list of 7,000 Satterwhites. He says they had a common ancestor, Michael Satterthwaite,
who emigrated from northern England to the Virginia area in the 1600s and changed the spelling of his name to Satterwhite.
Marshall checked genealogy records and discovered that he is, indeed, a distant cousin of Gilbert — sixth cousin, three times removed, to be exact.
Roppé invited Marshall and his wife, Patsy, to come to his home in Hemet, where he and Lynn moved in 2007 after living in Alpine, to take custody of his distant relative’s memorabilia.
Given the COVID-19 lockdown, Marshall says, “I was surprised they were willing to risk us going up there.” He added that they took appropriate pandemic precautions.
He is now preparing to send out an email blast to about 600 Satterwhite relatives to determine if there is someone with a closer family tie to Gilbert.
Marshall says he appreciates Roppé’s desire to return these items to a blood relative. “Some people are sentimental about things like that. I understand that because that’s the way I feel, too,” he says.
“If I put this artifact in the right hands, it will be passed down for a long time,” adds Marshall.
Gilbert’s former possessions now are prominently displayed. Marshall mounted images of the dog tag, World War I Victory Medal, State of Kentucky medallion, gold-plated chain, initialed watch fob and skull stick pin in a picture frame with a written description of their history.
“If I hadn’t been watching ‘Jeopardy!,’ ” says Roppé, “Gilbert’s dog tag, medal and other memorabilia might have been put in a drawer somewhere, forgotten, and never found their way home.”
Colorful past: An unexpected email opened a trunkful of memories for San Diegan Delle Willett.
In the mid-1960s she was art director for a local ad agency. One of her assignments was creating a children’s coloring book for Pacific Telephone. The topic: “Who is this lady called operator?”
Few kids today probably realize that decades ago, when you picked up a telephone, a live operator answered, who connected you to your friends, relatives, library, favorite restaurant, etc. — all these people and establishments we now call directly.
The email Willett received was from a man named John Kistler, who she learned was a Presbyterian Church pastor with a hobby of perusing garage sales, secondhand shops and bookstores looking for books to resell on eBay.
When he spotted her coloring book in a secondhand store in Eureka, he was intrigued, but no date of publication or publisher was listed, only Willett’s name as illustrator.
After a fruitless online title search for the book on eBay, Amazon and AbeBooks (Advanced Book Exchange), he tried Googling the name of Willett, who long has been involved in public relations work in San Diego. In no time he found her email address.
Kistler also found a customer. She bought the book for $10 and has had fun sharing it with her 6-yearold granddaughter and 4-year-old grandson.
After all, one of the illustrations of what kids can do with an operator was: “She can help me call my friends far away, or Grandma and Grandpa!”