Captain Rufus Ford Montgall

Rufus Ford Montgall was born in St. Louis in 1887 and was the second cousin of Harry S. Truman. 
During his time at the University of Pennsylvania, he was in the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and later registered for the draft on June 5, 1917.

Working overseas as a Quartermaster’s Corpsman, he and two others were “at their headquarters inside an abandoned chateau, miles behind the fighting line, when a bomb was dropped their chateau, killing all three men” on May 30, 1918. Rufus was once the Vice President of American Sash & Door Co. in Kansas City.

Capt. Montgall is buried in Somme American Cemetery, Bony, France, but a plaque was hung in his honor at Elmwood Cemetery in Kansas City. A letter from Montgall to his mother, written just days before his death, was later printed in the Kansas City Star to help raise funding for the Liberty Memorial.