| Notes |
- dates and documentation and comentary from "The Melia Family" by Kay Melia
The sixth Melia born to Newt and Grace and on the farm was Emmerson Eugene Melia, born April 12, 1908 on the family farm. He two, attended 8 years of Fonda country school and graduated at Bucklin High in 1927. Of all the Melia boys, Gene was arguably the best athlete of the bunch. Elmer always used to say that it was because, being the youngest, Gene had to run the hardest to keep up when the brothers ran to school and home ( this was about a five mile distance when in high school, and this was always their method of getting to and from school, bad weather and good) each day. Even when they went to country grade school, the brothers always used to laugh about how they raced to school each morning and then home at night which was only about a mile when in country grade school.
Gene, although the smallest of the 4 boys was a star football player, and excelled in track and field. Gene held the Kansas State record for the Class "B"(size of school) 100 yard dash for over 20 years, running the distance in 10 seconds flat in a state meet his senior year in high school. Gene was good enough that he was the only one of the boys to get an athletic scholarship to Emporia State College.
College life, however, was not what Gene expected, and he left there after a semester or so, and worked at a number of jobs including as a butcher for the local locker plant. He had learned that trade as a young man and used to handle the meat cutting for all the family when the butchering was done outside on the farm. Elmer used to say that Gene was the "free and independent spirit" of the family and used to like to race motorcycles and such.
He was the only one of the brothers in an age bracket that enabeled him to serve in the armed forces, enlisting in the Army at the age of 34 and serving as a radio repairman in the Signal Corp, and as a guard for German prisoners of war and kept in the borders of the United States.
On April 14, 1950, at the age of 42, Gene married Ruth Towner who was a hospital registered nurse, of Protection, a town just southeast of Bucklin. They lived in Douglas, Kansas and operated a locker and butcher plant there. In 1955, they moved to Johnstown, Colorado, and ran a locker plant and grocery store. Gene and Ruth had no children.
Gene, like brothers Oscar and Elmer, had a history of heart trouble, and died of a heart attack in Johnstown on April 29, 1962 at the age of 54, and is burried in the Bucklin Cemetery.
Ruth is still living in 2003 in Winfield, Kansas near her family and has continued in good health into her 90s.
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1908 - 1962 (54 years)
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