Buried under a small crumbling stone next to his family's monument in Washington Lawn Cemetery, are the remains of a World War I soldier, John Erskine Laraway, 27.
Because he passed away of pneumonia Sept. 6, 1919, after the Armistice, awaiting shipment back to America, his name was left off the official World War I memorial in downtown Centralia. John had been an actor/singer in Vaudeville companies on the West Coast before the war and served honorably in the Medical Corps.
Please think of John Laraway this September, life cut short in France.
