Memorial

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Pfc John J. Van Meter enlisted in Los Angeles, California on 9 April 1942.

On 1 July 1945, the following article appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
WAR BOND TOTALS ADD UP TO FAILURE But Loan Drive Workers Won't Concede Defeat ... Yesterday at Lowe's Stillman Theater and again tomorrow, every purchaser of a bond at the booth in the lobby will have the privilege (of) trampling upon a captured Nazi battle flag as the buyer moves away from the booth. The flag was mailed in May from Germany by Paratrooper Joseph Van Meter, jr., to his father, as resident of the Hotel Belmont after hostilities had ceased in Europe. It was intended for George A. Schneider's corporate auction in Hotel Carter June 21, but it arrived on June 23, two days too late. Meanwhile many tragic things had happened. Young Van Meter had met death in a motorcycle accident in Germany and on June 15 when this news reached his father it proved too much. Mr. Van Meter, sr, died that day of a heart attack. A few days ago Schneider turned the flag over to the theater's management for whatever use they could make of it in the bond drive. Arnold Gates, manager of the theater, said yesterday he could think of no better purpose to put it to than to spur bond buying on "Forget-Me-Not-Day."