William K. Farquhar Papers, 1943-2006, n.d.
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Administrative/Biographical History
William (Bill) Kilmer Farquhar was born on August 21, 1921 in Cleveland, Ohio to Thomas James Farquhar and Katherine Kilmer Farquhar, both Oberlin College graduates (as were two of Bill’s aunts and an uncle). The family moved several times before settling in Cleveland Heights in 1928. After seven years they again moved, to Rye, New York, in 1937. When Bill Farquhar had just finished his junior year in high school in Rye, his parents were compelled for financial reasons to move back to Oak Harbor, Ohio, about 64 miles northwest of Oberlin. Bill stayed in Rye, living with a family known to his parents, to finish out his high school education in 1939.
Bill Farquhar entered Oberlin College in 1939 intending to pursue a career in engineering, but majored in English Literature. As a member of the swimming team, Bill earned three varsity letters. From 1940 until his graduation, Bill lived at Delta Lodge. His parents had moved to Oberlin after his freshman year. On July 17, 1942 Bill enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve, and was one of about 100 in the first wartime accelerated graduation group at Oberlin, graduating in February 1943. He was ordered to report for active duty on April 8, 1943 and was sent from Cleveland to Camp Perry Ohio for induction processing and then on to Camp Grant, Illinois, for three months of basic training as a Private in the Army’s Medical Corps.
In July 1943, after being accepted as an Officer Candidate, Farquhar was shipped to Camp Barkeley, Texas. He was commissioned in mid-November as a 2nd Lieutenant Medical Administrative Corps and was immediately assigned to the 100th Infantry division. He joined the 100th in the Tennessee maneuver area in early December 1943 and became a platoon leader in a medical combat company. After six weeks of living in the open under simulated battle conditions, the Division was moved by truck convoy in mid-January to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After eight weeks of intense training, the Division moved by train to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, boarded troopships and left New York Harbor on October 6, 1944.
After two weeks crossing the Atlantic, the Division landed at Marseille, France. In late October Farquhar’s company entered Baccarat where the Division was committed to combat. The combat team, the 397th Infantry Regiment, fought into the Vosges Mountains. In late November they were shifted northward to the Sarrebourg area in Alsace-Lorraine where the 100th proceeded through rough terrain towards Bitche, France and the Maginot fortress system. In mid-December the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium forced them into defense. From mid-January to mid-March 1945 they stayed in and around the small towns of Diemerengen and Rhorbach not far from the German border.
On March 15th, the 397th, after a brief battle, rolled northward through Bitche into Germany, crossed the Rhine at Mannheim, and headed south through Heidelberg to Heilbronn where, with the war almost over, they had a very difficult engagement with the enemy while trying to cross the Neckar River. When the shooting finally ended, Bill was near Stuttgart and, on VE Day, he was close to Ulm in Southern Germany.
The 100th Division spent the summer of 1945 in and around Stuttgart, training and waiting to be shipped to the Pacific by way of the U.S. After VJ Day, the 100th was broken up and in September Farquhar was transferred to the 29th Infantry Regiment in Frankfurt and became a Battalion Surgeon’s Assistant. He spent eight months in Frankfurt as part of the Army of Occupation. In April 1946 the 29th was moved north to the Bremen Enclave, the American seaport for occupied Germany and in the heart of the British occupation zone. Finally, in late July 1946, Farquhar sailed from Bremerhaven to New York, was processed out of active duty at Fort Meade, Maryland, and flew home to Cleveland, and Oberlin, on August 6, 1946.
Farquhar returned home a Captain in October, 1946, and enrolled at once at Oberlin College for the fall semester under the GI Bill. The veterans and their friends did a great deal of partying, which to Farquhar became tiresome and aimless. Starting as a junior salesman in 1947, he was employed by the Crane Company until 1963. In 1950 Farquhar married Leslie Ann Candor (OC 1950) of Dayton. They settled in Akron, Ohio, where Bill was Assistant to the Manager for the Crane Company. They had three children, Lorraine (b. 1952), Thomas (b. 1955), and Robert (b. 1959). Bill’s work in the company took the family to Louisville, then Cleveland, Chicago, and finally back to Louisville.
In 1963 Farquhar took a position as Vice-President and General Manager for his father’s manufacturing company, the Gasflux Company in Elyria, which enabled the family to move to Oberlin. His father was one of the principal inventors of gasfluxing, a process of brazing, the joining of two metals using a dissimilar metal as the connecting agent. This process requires using a flux to dissolve oxides formed on the materials by the high temperatures required by brazing. Thomas Farquhar’s process improved on previous methods by using a liquid flux and a special applicator to “put the flux in the flame.” In 1939 Thomas Farquhar was one of the founders of the Gasflux Company, incorporated in Mansfield, Ohio. He served first as its sales manager and then as its president until his death in 1967. In 1956, the gasfluxing company moved to Elyria, Ohio. Although a local manufacturing company, Gasflux had a national distribution. Included among them were such giants as General Electric and Westinghouse, as well as silversmiths and manufacturers of products such as steel office desks, refrigerator cabinets, hot water heaters, and bicycles. In 1965 Thomas turned the entire operation over to Bill, and in 1967 Thomas Farquhar passed away.
In 1993 Farquhar officially retired and his son Bob became President of Gasflux while Farquhar remained as Chairman and consultant. In March of 1999 the couple moved to Kendal at Oberlin. Leslie Candor Farquhar died on March 13, 2009. Bill Farquhar continues to live at Kendal at Oberlin.
Sources Consulted
Biographical statement c. 2005, William K. Farquhar Papers (30/380), Series II.
Alumni file for William Kilmer Farquhar (Oberlin College Office of Development).
Thomas and Katherine Farquhar Papers finding guide (30/283).
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationLeslie C. Farquhar Papers (30/401).
Thomas and Katherine Farquhar Papers (30/283).
The papers were arranged by William K. Farquhar into three groupings: Series I. Correspondence during Military Service in World War II, 1943-46; Series II. Memoir of Military Service during World War II, 1945-46, 1996 (in four binders); and Series III. Additional Materials, 1944-46, 1984, 2005-06, n.d.
Series I holds original letters, nearly all written by William K. Farquhar during his service in the Army. One exception is a letter he received from the President of Oberlin College, Ernest H. Wilkins, dated 4/27/1943. The correspondence includes a few telegrams and some Army postal cards.
Series II represents a memoir or journal of his wartime service compiled by Farquhar in 1996, with handwritten transcriptions of letters in Series I and additional explanatory text, copies of photographs, maps, documents, clippings, telegrams, calendars, cartoons, and one original telegram. This represents the most complete record of Farquhar’s wartime experience.
Series III holds a less ambitious project of Farquhar’s done in 1984, as well as a statement to the reader dated 2005, a letter of 2006 to the Archivist, and autobiographical texts written c. 2005. The Introduction to the 1984 effort summarizes Farquhar’s life from his enrollment at Oberlin College in 1939 to his separation from service in the Army on October 6, 1946 (he remained in the inactive reserve until April 1, 1953). This is followed by a history of Company A, 325th Medical Battalion, 100th Infantry Division, that he wrote in 1945-46. The next section is devoted to typed transcriptions of entries made in his small, pocket-sized notebook that served as his 1944-45 wartime diary. Next comes a short summary setting the stage for his letters. “Afterthoughts” holds recollections of the deaths of persons close to Farquhar, a piece reflecting on the letters as a whole, a trip to Germany he took with his wife Leslie in 1985 to visit places where he had seen combat, and a summary of other trips to the U.K. and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. This series finishes with a small set of photocopies from published sources.