Jack Lummus

Lummus reached Iwo Jima by way of two interrupted careers. The National WWII Museum says he played baseball and football at Baylor, enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, and washed out of flight school after clipping a fence with a wingtip while taxiing on his first solo. He then made the New York Giants roster, played nine games and belonged to the team that reached the championship game two weeks after Pearl Harbor. He joined the Marines in January 1942, took a rifle platoon on March 6, 1945, and got eighteen pints of blood before he died.

What the plaque says

Jack Lummus (October 22, 1915 - March 8, 1945) Born on an Ellis County farm, Jack Lummus attended school at Alma and Ennis, and Baylor University on an athletics scholarship. He played minor league baseball in Texas and football for the New York Giants. He joined the U. S. Marines in 1942 and on February 19, 1945, landed with the Fifth Marine Division in the first wave of assault troops on Iwo Jima. On March 8, after fighting without respite for two days and nights, Lummus and his rifle platoon slowly advanced toward a complex of pillboxes before being halted by Japanese forces. Despite injuries from two grenade explosions, Lummus single-handedly destroyed three enemy emplacements before stepping on a land mine, sustaining fatal wounds. (1999) Supplemental plate: An exhibit with photos of Jack Lummus, a copy of the citation for his Medal of Honor and other records are available in the library on this site.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 13 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 19 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 29 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.

More markers nearby

• Jay Justin Clarke — 0.2 mi
• Town of Ennis — 0.3 mi
• Railroads in Ennis — 0.3 mi
• Burnam Square and Cemetery — 0.3 mi