by Hap Rocketto and Loy Hamilton
A 19 1/2
For a competitive shooter Camp Perry is both constantly changing and forever timeless. Never was that more obvious than for just nine short days between August 31st and September 8th of 1946.
Pistol and smallbore rifle shooters last gathered for the National Matches five years earlier, in 1941, on almost the exact same dates, August 31st and September 7th. In both cases the 30 caliber shooters and the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice team matches were absent. Three months, to the day the matches ended, the United States was drawn into World War II.
In the intervening years the shooting community rallied to the war effort. Randle Thurman and Connecticut’s Lacy brothers joined the Navy and ran the rifle ranges at the Newport Naval Station. Irwin “Doc” Tekulsky took his dental skills to war, also serving in the Navy. Walter Walsh and Emmett Swanson saw action with the Marines. Art Jackson and Tom Lewis joined the Army Air Forces. Many others, such as Eleanor Dunn, served as civilian marksmanship instructors. Most would return safely but the shooting community lost its share of members.
Camp Perry served as an induction center and more famously as a prisoner of war camp during World War II. The some 2,000 huts erected to hold German and Italian POWs would welcome the 1946 competitors as well as generations yet to come and yet unborn.
The shooting community had hoped the matches would resume at the cessation of hostilities. They held their collective breathes but it wasn’t until late July of 1946 that the matches were confirmed. Noted Double Distinguished and Olympic marksman Brigadier General Sidney Hinds assumed the duties of Match Director and shooters across the nation began making plans.
The 1946 match picked up where the 1941 championship left off. Garret Wayne Moore, who had lost his leg as a lad, borrowed a rifle and ended up winning the first of his two consecutive prone national titles. Adelaide McCord took the second of her four ladies’ crowns as Art Cook swept the junior category.
The matches might not have been held if not for the work of World War I veteran Edward Dobscha of Willoughby, Ohio. Dobscha, a well known rifleman, had been a member of the 1941 Dewar Team and would again win a spot in 1946 as well.
In recognition of Dobscha’s efforts Frank Kahrs, who was the public relations manager for Remington Arms and a former staff writer for the Rifleman, asked James T. Berryman, then the Art Director for the American Rifleman Magazine to create a cartoon for presentation to Dobscha.
Berryman, whose father Clifford, a Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist, drew the famous cartoon of President Theodore Roosevelt sparing a bear cub which inspired the creation of the teddy bear, would go on in his father’s footsteps to win his own Pulitzer.
The resulting art work produced by Berryman was a pen and ink sketch of a mother cat trailed by her two kittens walking behind a smallbore firing line. A rifleman, irritated by what little noise the felines might have made padding across the grass, calls out, “Quite Please!”
Prominent among the 65 or so match participants who signed the cartoon before it was presented to Dobscha were:
- Thurman Randle: President of the NRA and donor of the Randle Trophy
- John Unertl: famed rifle scope manufacturer
- Harold D. Allyn: well known Massachusetts rifleman
- Al Freeland: shooting equipment innovator
- Garret Wayne Moore: 1946 and 1947 National Prone Champion
- Bob Moore: cousin of G. Wayne and the 1958 National Prone Champion at Camp Perry and the first winner of the Lister Cup in 1952 as National Indoor 4-Position Champion.
- Sam Bond: the senior prone trophy at the national prone championship is named in honor of this shooting equipment innovator
- Rans Triggs: 1941 National Prone Champion
- Bill Schweitzer: noted rifleman and benefactor of the sport for whom the national civilian prone championship award is named.
- The Tekulsky brothers, Sam and Erwin: noted New York Riflemen
- The Lacy Brothers, Jack and Jim: Distinguished Connecticut Riflemen
- Francis O’Hare: the son of Paddy O’Hare shooting equipment supplier and shooter in his own right
- Eric Johnson: 1921 National Prone Champion and noted Connecticut barrel maker
- Russ Wiles, Jr.: RIG company president, rifleman, and the founder of the Black Hawk Rifle Club
- Jim Crossman: firearms writer, Distinguished Rifleman, National Match official
- John Wark: Pershing Team member
- Bill Woodring: Perishing Team member, world champion team member and the only person to win three consecutive US national prone titles
- Kay Woodring: first US female international rifle shooter, wife of Bill Woodring
- Marianne Driver: the Grande Dame of US Randle Teams
- Vincent Tiefenbrunn: smallbore shooter Winchester-Western/Western executive
- Charles Hamby: noted Atlanta, Georgia rifleman
- “Tiny” Helwig: Winchester employee and noted rifleman
- A.L. Darkrow: mainstay of Akron, Ohio’s Zeppelin Rifle Club
- Earl Saunders: Kentucky rifleman and many times member of the Dewar Team
This historical artifact is now in the possession of Loy Hamilton who has graciously allowed us to reprint it.
I want to thank you for posting this. My name is Dan Moore, and Garrett Wayne Moore was my grandfather. I googled his name and came across this article. I didn’t realize until after his death in 1993 what a great world-class marksman he was. Growing up, I remember seeing all his trophies around the house, but he was such a quiet and humble man, he never spoke much about it. I wish he was still around to talk about the good old days now that I’m old enough to truly appreciate the things he did.
Small world! My name is Leonard Moore, which makes Dan and I cousins. My father is G. W. Moore’s middle son, Gary. My son is Garrett. I, too, remember “Pap-pap” Moore, and that gravelly voiced “Hey Buddy!” I also remember him running over Uncle Dave’s mailbox back in the 70’s. Maybe his eyes weren’t too good by then 🙂