Private John Martin Steele was a Marine, a Gold Star veteran, and the namesake for the Morris VFW Post 6049. He enlisted Dec. 24, 1941, and served on the USS Lexington, a fleet carrier. His primary responsibility in his battle station was using an anti-aircraft gun.

He was at his gun the morning of May 8, 1942, when the carrier’s air group went to attack the Japanese fleet on the last day of the Battle of the Coral Sea.

According to Corsello’s writing, enemy aircraft spotted the fleet carrier and attack planes broke through the screen of anti-aircraft fire.

Two torpedoes and one bomb struck near battery #2, killing and wounding many of the gunners and setting off ammunition stored in a locker nearby. Steele was killed along with 13 other men. He was the first Grundy County resident killed in World War II. He had a destroyer, the USS Steele, named after him and the VFW Post 6049 was named after him when it was chartered in 1946.

Much of this information, and the information in the story on the feature story on Robert Huston, comes from the Veterans Legacy Center in the upstairs of the American Legion Post 294, 212 W. Washington St. in Morris. While the Veterans Legacy Center has already been featured for a previous Thank You, Veterans edition, it has since been renovated and grown to include more artifacts and information.

The Veterans Legacy Center now has a website operated by one of the subjects of that Morris Herald-News feature story, Carter Corsello, where he writes stories of his own. Corsello has shared these stories with the Morris Herald-News, which highlight the many from Grundy County who have served.

To see Corsello’s work, along with many photos and documents, visit https://legionpost294.org/veterans-legacy-center.