Charles H. Roan

Roan grew up in Claude, the son of Henry C. and Lillabel (Bacon) Roan. He joined the Methodist church at nine and worked at a service station after school and on weekends. At seventeen he followed his brother Henry to California, and he volunteered for the Marine Corps in 1942. Sent to the Pacific in June 1943, he fought in eastern New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago before the Palau Islands. He also received the Purple Heart. The Handbook of Texas records that this marker was placed on the Roan family plot in the Claude Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Charles H. Roan (Aug. 16, 1923-Sept. 18, 1944). Winner, Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism during the Allied Forces' invasion of Peleliu in the western Pacific, in World War II. On July 21, 1945, he was decorated posthumously by presentation of his medal to his mother, Armstrong County Treasurer, Mrs. Lillabel Roan, in Claude. A Navy destroyer in 1946 was christened with his name. Private Roan's grave is in the Marine Cemetery, Peleliu Island. Recorded - 1970

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gem Theatre — 2.0 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 15 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Lighthouse Trail — 21 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.

More markers nearby

• Claude Cemetery — steps away
• Claude Monroe Ayers — steps away
• Early Sheriffs of Armstrong County, 1890-1926 — 1.9 mi
• Armstrong County Jail — 1.9 mi