Wrightson Ely Clinton, Sr. collection

Wrightson Ely Clinton Sr. was born on April 11, 1923, to Charles Ely Clinton and Ruth Seiffert Clinton. He had one younger brother named Charles Henry Clinton. Wrightson graduated from New Brunswick High School in 1941. Before enlisting, he worked as a stock clerk for the Mack Manufacturing Corporation of New Brunswick and attended night school at Rutgers University to study Engineering, Metallurgy, and Engines.

On April 28, 1943, he was inducted into the United States Army National Guard’s 31st Infantry Division at Fort Dix, New Jersey. This was also known as the “Dixie Division” because it was primarily composed of guardsmen from the South. He was assigned to the 116th Field Artillery Battalion and trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before being deployed to the Pacific Theater.

He was a Private First-Class in the Netherlands East Indies in 1944, serving primarily as a clerk battery doing secretarial work. He toured New Guinea, Dutch Guinea, and Morotai Island. There, he witnessed the Battle of Morotai and photographed General MacArthur's landing on September 15, 1944. In mid-1945, he was stationed at Mindanao in the southern Philippines; thus, he participated in—and is decorated for—Philippine Liberation. Among the places, he visited there were Del Monte Airstrip, Malaybalay, Sayre Highway, Macajalar Bay, and the Agusan Plateau. By June 1945, he was promoted to corporal.

During his time in the Pacific, he took many personal photographs with written anecdotes on the back. These describe his daily life, his fellow soldiers, where he went, and what he did. He sent these pictures home to his family and eventually compiled a scrapbook of his time abroad. He returned to the U.S. via the USS Barnett in December 1945 and was honorably discharged January 3, 1946, in Monmouth, NJ. He would become the commander for the Clark-Moetz 2319 Veterans of Foreign Wars post later that year, focusing on soldiers’ readjustment to civilian life. He passed away May 10, 2005, at the age of 82 and was survived by his wife Patricia, brother Charles, and daughter Alice Mae Clinton Russo. The latter makes mention of her mother Helen in her included notes, who is thought to have at least been Clinton’s sweetheart during the war. Alice donated this collection to Florida State University in 2009.