Military: World War I: Edward A. "Ted" Savage.  Schuylkill County, PA

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                    EDWARD A. “TED” SAVAGE
                UNITED STATES ARMY, WORLD WAR I

        Edward A. “Ted” Savage was born on December 23, 1896, in Shenandoah, and 
was named Edward Adolfisson Switsavage.  His parents were Stiney Switsavage, 
age 20, a coal miner, and Mary Bavtebechcia Switsavage, age 22.  Both had 
been born in Lithuania, Russia.  Stiney emigrated to the United States in 
1890 and became a citizen at Pottsville in 1904.
        Ted attended high school in Pottsville, and in 1914, at age 18, three years 
before the United  States entered the war on April 6, 1917, he enlisted in 
the Army at Fort Slocum, New York, in the cavalry.  In 1918 he was assigned 
to a field artillery division at Forth Ethan Allen, Vermont, then to Camp 
Shelby, Mississippi.  From there his division was shipped to France where he 
engaged in five major engagements.  His World War I Victory Medal included 
clasps for Champagne-Marne, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, and 
Defense Sector.   He was a sergeant.  He once remarked that “There were no 
musicians on the front line.  You just couldn’t knock over the enemy with a 
sour note.”
        Ted returned to the United States in 1919.  He received his discharge in 
1923 at Fort D. A. Russel, Wyoming, after serving 9 years and 3 months.
        Ted had been a bugler in the cavalry.  After the war he changed to the 
trombone and tuba making his living as a musician playing in concert and 
dance bands around the country.  He  arrived in Las Vegas to play at the 
Venetian Ballroom.  On one of his nights off, he drove to Boulder City to 
investigate the band being organized by Otto Kittler, who had formerly 
played with a big name orchestra.  The band urged Ted to take a job with the 
U. S. Bureau of Reclamation so that he could join them.  When the ballroom 
closed in 1932 he joined the garden staff of the public works department of 
Boulder City, then part of the Department of Reclamation for the Boulder 
Canyon Project of the federal government, which was constructing the Boulder 
Dam.
        Ted married Novella Kirkland.
        He proved to have a green thumb, and for 26 years he devoted his time to 
making Boulder City a green oasis in the desert.  When he retired in May 
1958, after 35 years of military and civilian service, the City Manager 
stated that “The entire city has been his yard and he has cared for it 
meticulously as though it were his own.”
        Ted and Novella did not have children.  He died in 1967 and Novella in 
1970.  They had lived at 734 Park Street, Boulder City.
        He is mentioned for his service during World War I in Joseph Henry Zerbey’s 
“History of Pottsville and Schuylkill County, Volume V” (1934-1935) (Page 
2017).