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Published Sunday, August 24, 2008 in Close-Up

Cheney served in Quartermaster Corps in WWII

By Alex McRae

The Times-Herald

Illness has confined Frank Cheney to his bed and left him barely able to speak, but friends and family are only too happy to share their memories of a man who spent his life demonstrating his devotion to his family, his country, his community and his students.

"He just loves everything and everybody," says his wife, Sarah. "He can't really get around now. But when he could, he was everywhere doing everything."

Cheney was born and raised in Talbot County near the Woodland community. As a child he did farm chores to help put food on the table. He attended school when he could and did well. But as the Great Depression deepened, times got even tougher at home, and Cheney left school after the sixth grade to work full time to support the family.

He eventually left farm work for a job at a local sawmill. He was there when the Army called him into service.

Cheney was inducted at Fort Benning, but didn't stay long. After a few weeks of basic training he traveled to Cheyenne, Wyo., where he joined thousands of other soldiers training for service with the Quartermaster Corps.

During World War II, almost half of the Quartermaster Corps was made up of black soldiers. Cheyenne was the perfect place for training -- at least symbolically.

When Cheney reported, his duty station was called Fort Frances E. Warren. But when the fort was built in 1866, it was called Fort Russell and served as the home of all-black Army regiments that came to be known as the "Buffalo Soldiers."

For decades the Buffalo Soldiers served with honor and distinction guarding America's rapidly-expanding western frontier.

But once Cheney reached Cheyenne he didn't have time for history lessons. It was strictly business and for Cheney that meant learning the Army way of sorting, inventorying, protecting and distributing supplies and weapons to troops as quickly and efficiently as possible.

After he finished his training, Cheney joined 486th Quartermaster Company and traveled to San Francisco to board a troop ship for the Pacific. The trip was long and hot and Cheney didn't set foot on land until the ship reached Vanuatu, then part of the New Hebrides Islands.

His unit loaded and unloaded food, medicine, equipment and the piece of cargo Cheney remembers most: artillery shells.

"They were heavy," he says. "That was hard."

Cheney soon realized that the Japanese were as interested in Quartermaster activities as the Americans. The enemy knew they could slow the Allied advance by denying them fresh troops and supplies. Cheney's group sometimes came under enemy fire.

Cheney was a trained Army rifleman and got to practice his marksmanship skills more than once during enemy attacks.

"I shot and they shot back," he says. Luckily, Cheney was never hit.

Cheney says one of his lieutenants didn't have an appetite for combat and let everyone know it.

"He was scared of the Army," Cheney says. "One day he walked off and never came back."

From Vanuatu, the 486th moved south to Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia. Cheney felt like he'd gone straight to France, and in a way, he had.

New Caledonia is a French colony. Noumea was then packed with French restaurants, shops and stores operated by French-speaking natives. In 1942, New Caledonia became a major Allied staging base and by the end of the war, it was home to a major Allied hospital that served the more than 40,000 injured troops who passed through during the war.

Cheney was in New Caledonia when the war ended. By early 1946 he was back in Talbot County, operating the edge runner at a local sawmill. In his spare time he started courting Sarah Edwards, a young lady from Woodland he had known all his life but never dated until after the war.

The two hit it off and were married in March 1947.

By then Frank Cheney was determined not to spend the rest of his life at the sawmill. He had managed to complete his high school degree in the Army, and in the process developed a thirst for learning that would last the rest of his life.

Cheney used his GI benefits to enroll at Albany State College. Sarah followed, and they moved into former Army barracks that served as married student housing.

While Frank got his academic feet on the ground, Sarah worked downtown and later enrolled in school herself.

Frank worked in the dining hall during the day and cleaned the administration building at night. Students were required to attend weekly chapel services, and Cheney was honored to be chosen as an usher.

Cheney also loved music and started taking trombone lessons. He was so good he joined the college marching band.

Things were always tight but occasionally, Frank and Sarah scraped together enough change to go downtown for a movie.

"It was a long walk, but we were together and didn't mind a bit," Sarah says. "We didn't go often, but it was always fun."

Frank graduated from Albany State first and taught in Talbot County while Sarah finished college. In the mid-1950s, they both moved to Coweta County and began teaching careers that would last for decades.

Sarah started at Eastside School and Frank went to Howard Warner High School, the black high school on Savannah Street that later housed Coweta County School Board offices.

Cheney taught math and science to his students during the day, and at night he taught classes to veterans trying to further their education. He eventually moved to Ruth Hill School where, in addition to teaching math and science, Cheney got his students fired up about his athletic first love -- track and field. Cheney often organized races on the school playground and ran along, pushing the kids to do their best. Cheney ended his teaching career at Central, when it was still a high school.

Retired Coweta educator and current Coweta Board of Education member Winston Dowdell says Cheney was a "student's teacher" and was always being called on after class for advice about everything from classwork to social activities.

"He was a great teacher," Dowdell says, "and the students really admired him. They were always going to him for advice and counsel."

Cheney also clung to his love of music and appeared regularly on a rhythm and blues radio station in Manchester.

"He sang on that radio station, and he danced, too," says Cheney's son, Frank Derrell Cheney. "I don't know how you can dance on the radio and make it work, but he did and a lot of people listened to him."

But Cheney's first love was learning. Sarah says Frank spent several summers taking classes at colleges across the country, including the University of Texas. He wasn't looking for advanced degrees in education. He was just learning more about his favorite subjects, from history to science to philosophy.

"He just wanted to learn about everything," Sarah says. "He couldn't get enough of it."

Son Frank Derrell says the house was always littered with books about every topic imaginable and Cheney was a walking encyclopedia about anything you could name.

"He knew something about everything," Frank Derrell says. "I remember one time he taught me the difference between cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lighting. He could name every kind of cloud there was, and in the evening he could go out and look at the sky and give you a perfect weather forecast. It was amazing."

Cheney even knew the Bible so well his fellow members at Mt. Vernon First Baptist Church affectionately called him "The Lord," says Cheney's son.

But Cheney liked to have fun, too, and was a big Atlanta Braves supporter. He was in the stands when Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record in April 1974.

"He was so excited, he was just thrilled to death," says Sarah. "He loved it."

Cheney also devoted much of his spare time to community activities, serving as a Boy Scout leader and remaining active for years at the Pinson Street community center now named for founder Verona Rosser.

To his children, Cheney passed along his love of country and education. One of Cheney's sons served in the Marines and two in the Army, and his daughter was an officer in the Air Force. Cheney's three sons graduated from Albany State, and his daughter attended Albany State before graduating from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. "Frank always said how much he loved the Army," Sarah says. "That passed on to the children. But the thing he loved most was teaching and learning new things. When he was learning something or teaching it to someone else, he was never happier."