Hilary Youngpeter
We could have spent hours with our next Human of Findlay and still just scratched the surface of his story. Hilary Youngpeter has served his family, his country and his community for most of his 92 years. Born in Allen county on a 60 acre farm he was one of four brothers. It was a farm without machinery, electricity and all work was manually done by Hilary’s parents, his siblings and horses. They raised tomatoes, pickles, sugar beets and clover. They also hired out to other farms.
His dad was his inspiration as he was the strongest man he has ever met. He taught Hilary a very serious and strong work ethic.
For his education he graduated youngest in his class from Columbus Grove in 1941. Hilary studied at Northwest Business school in Lima and had two years of advanced classes at Ohio Northern in Ada in 1948-49.
He was working at Westinghouse in 1943 when he volunteered to serve in the Army Air corps during WWII. (A note: Hilary’s brothers all served during WWII and to meet the military requirements that no two brothers could be in the same unit, Howard the eldest served in the Marines, Tony, the Army, Willy, the Navy and Hilary in the Air corps.)
During his time in the service PFC Hilary was stationed in the British Isles, France, Belgium and Germany. He was primarily a guard but with a shooting skill he honed as a boy on the farm he was assigned to dangerous situations and qualified for combat pay. He was once in France where snipers were trying to take out allied aircraft parked on the tarmac. It was his job to discourage snipers with his accurate shot selection. In another instance he was brought in to guard allied mail trucks that were being stolen by the French because of the value of the mail. He replaced a soldier who had been beaten to death by thieves. Hilary took it as a challenge and shot at anything that moved. He was successful in intimidating the thieves as not another truck was stolen during his tenure. The airman narrowly avoided death by German U-boats. His unit was shipped to France via the Leopold II, a large Belgium freighter. On it next voyage to France it was sunk and all lives, 800 soldiers and crew, were lost.
Back from the war Hilary finished school, worked for a bit at IBM supplying Ohio Oil with office machines before being recruited to join what is now Marathon. Hilary retired from Marathon as an analyst responsible for all office machines and acquisitions on a worldwide basis. He has a high point that he was responsible for the initial training of Gary Heminger of Marathon.
Before leaving Lima to move to Findlay, he met Marilyn Fox, fell in love with her looks and personality and when she proposed he accepted. “I was married for 63 years and never proposed to a woman”, he smiles. “She was a gem!”
He and his bride were the parents of five children, Julie, Steve, Bill, Don and Beth and they have also 8 grandbabies and 4 great-grandbabies. Marilyn passed away in 2014, preceded in death by their daughter Julie.
He loved to hunt having learned at a young age of nine to shoot and trap muskrats, weasels, coons and skunks. He would rise at 3 a.m. to hunt and check his traps. He was noted in the military for his shooting skill as he learned to shoot in low light without his rifle sites. He was able to qualify as a marksman in the military on a dare with his sergeant that he could shoot with his sites covered with tape. He was then used to train 640 airmen who had failed their first pass at target practice.
His health is great and he manages his home with the assistance of his furry sidekick Sophie. There are numerous family members including many cousins so he is rarely lonely.
We have barely tapped into Hilary’s amazing life and story. He has been featured in a book by Ron Ammons on his military service and history.