R360
Husband: James (Peck) Wilmore LaRue (Figs. R360a, b)
Father: Clarence Carlisle LaRue
Mother: Carrie Hood (Wilmore) LaRue
Born: 3/7/1924
Died: 6/5/2011
Wife: Janis Armentrout (Matheney) LaRue (Fig. R360a)
Father: Edward Custer Matheney [R359]
Mother: Bettie Alexander (Armentrout) Matheney [R359]
Born: 10/27/1923
Died: 7/5/2002
Married: 9/1/1951
(2013) Peck served as an ambulance driver in the 303rd Medical Battalion, 78th Infantry Division, in the European Theater during WWII. He was in the Battle of the Bulge (12/1944), and crossed the Rhine on the railroad bridge at Remagen that was captured intact from the Germans 3/7/1945. The Germans succeeded in destroying it 10 days later, but in the interim Peck crossed on the bridge many times driving his ambulance. He earned a Combat Medics Badge and, 47 years after the fact, a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster.
After the War Peck attended Washington and Lee University 1946-1948 under the G.I. Bill, then returned to Bath County where he has farmed and worked in a variety of occupations since.
Janis was trained as a Nurse during WWII, in a program that cycled her from the University of Cincinnati to the Medical College of Richmond to the C&O School of Nursing in Clifton Forge, where she received her cap in 1945. Thereafter she worked for the C&O Clinic in Richmond and the Visiting Nurse Service in New York City. In 1947 she nursed at the Greenbriar Clinic in White Sulfur Springs W.Va., then at the C&O Hospitals in Huntington W.Va. and in Clifton Forge. From 1962 until 1978, when she retired, Janis was Administrator and Director of Nurses at the Bath County Community Hospital in Hot Springs.
During those years the LaRues had a house in Hot Springs, but they also kept their Bath County country property, ~100 acres of mostly wooded land called Indian Hill Farm. Their home can be seen in the Fig. R003a map, at the end of a dashed-line road immediately S of Indian Hill Church in tract A. This farm is part of the first property Edward Wood [R003] purchased in Bath County in 1810, and it has belonged to Edward and his descendants since that year.
Both Janis [S007] and Peck knew a great deal about Bath County history, and they were immensely helpful to me in writing this history. Janis was also a natural historian and an avid collector of Indian artifacts, which are abundant in the area, as the place names suggest.
Children:
Elizabeth Custer LaRue, m. John Riley Haws (d. 1994) then Chris
Smith
Mary Shawn LaRue, m. Dwayne Lewis Nashwinter (d. 11/1995)
Grandchildren:
Mara Hood LaRue
Julia Alexander Nashwinter
Courtney Jordan Nashwinter
George Wilmore Haws
