Harold Oliver Rice Jr.

PFC in 603rd Engineer Camouflage Bn : Co A

ASN#17122676

Born 1908 in NE, Died 1966

Artist

County of residence at enlistment: Otoe County, NE

Other residence(s): Nebraska City, NE; Chicago, IL; NY?

United States Army, European Theatre of Operations

Occupation before the war: wholesale managers

College education before the war: UVA Charlottesville; American Academy of Art (Chicago); Chicago Art Institute

Notes: Rank added per gravestone

Source: Company A Roster; Teddy Katz Co A Roster

Harold Rice was born on July 28, 1908 in Nebraska City, NE. His father was a wholesale grocer with the firm Sergeant Rice Co., and he had one older sister, Phyllis.

He graduated from Nebraska City High School in 1925; at graduation his mother played the piano, and his father played the violin and directed the chorus.

Harold studied engineering at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in the fall of 1926, but left after one semester. In the spring of 1927, he was studying art in Chicago; newspaper articles say that he was enrolled at the American College of Arts and later at the National Academy of Arts (these are likely both referring to the American Academy of Art which had opened in Chicago in 1923). He graduated from the Institute of Art in Chicago in 1931 and opened a studio in that city. Articles about him throughout the 1930s continue to describe him as an artist. He entered a contest for Post Office murals in 1935, and in that year also headed to Florida to paint and sketch (seascapes, landscapes, and portraits). A 1936 article says that he "is becoming a noted young artist. He is a portrait painter, and he also paints murals."

In 1939 he was still in Chicago, but by 1940 he had moved back to live with his father in Nebraska City, and become an accountant at, and later manager of, H.O. Rice & Co., his father's eponymously named wholesale grocery firm. His mother had died in 1937, and this may have contributed to his decision to move back home and join his father in the business. But he was still a practicing artist.

Harold registered for the draft on October 15, 1940, and enlisted on September 11, 1942. Like other urban artists, he was assigned to the 603rd Engineer Camouflage Battalion; a few weeks after enlisting, he wrote his father a letter from Fort Meade saying that he liked his army work and found plenty to keep him interested and busy. He saw service in Europe during the war, reporting to his father that they had built bridges across the Rhine, fought vigorously against bitter Nazi opposition, and, on two occasions, could have been surrounded and wiped out if "the Germans had had enough sense to attack us." Harold was discharged on September 26, 1945 with the rank of PFC, and returned to Nebraska City.

Little is known of his life over the next twenty years. By 1950, his father had remarried and retired, leaving Harold to run the wholesale grocery business. His sister had long since left Nebraska, earning her doctorate from Penn State in geology and geography in 1948, and pursuing an academic career.

Harold's gravestone has the words "New York" engraved, mysteriously, below his name. Did he leave Nebraska and go to New York to take up his art again? Perhaps one day we'll learn the answer.

Harold died on August 7, 1966 in a hospital in Omaha, NE; his death notice provides only one clue to his life: the single word "Artist." He is buried at Wyuka Cemetery in Nebraska City.