They Chose America

—Cherokee-Lemp Historic District —

The men who used to come home to the town house to your right and to the one that stood on this vacant lot had faced difficult choices when the United States entered World War I in the spring of 1917.

Julius Dittmaier was the 21-year-old son of a German immigrant. George Brosch was the 18-year-old son of Bohemian immigrants. The United States entered the War on the side of the Allies, England and France. The American Army would soon be helping the Allies destroy the armies of Germany and Austria, killing their young German and Bohemian draftees.

Both these young men put on the uniform of the American doughboy, knowing that they could be shooting at their own cousins.

While tens of thousands of young men were left dead on the battlefields of Europe, Julius Dittmaier and George Brosch came home to America, got jobs, and started families. By 1929, they were neighbors on Cherokee Street.

Julius Dittmaier earned his living as a stock clerk, a private watchman and a maintenance man while he and his family rented the upstairs flat of this town home. George Brosch was a baker when he moved to Cherokee Street. He and his wife paid $20 a month rent for the second floor flat at 1909 Cherokee.

The two World War I vets were neighbors on Cherokee Street throughout the Great Depression, and were



still neighbors on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged the United States in World War II.

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