Killed on Nov. 23, 1951, Pfc. Wilbur John Robinson was one of just seven Yellowstone County residents to die in the Korean War.

In 1997 the Veterans Memorial Wall was dedicated on the south lawn of the Yellowstone County Courthouse to honor local men and women who died in wars up through Vietnam, and Wilbur’s name was supposed to be one of them.

Except when the memorial went up, his name wasn’t there. Instead, the name shown is of Willard Robinson.

“People who knew him know that it’s him up there, that his name is Wilbur,” said Ivory Robinson, Wilbur’s older brother. “But if not, they have no idea.”

 

Last chapter

 

Now Ivory may get some closure on the last chapter of his brother’s life, nearly 60 years after he was killed. Yellowstone County Commissioner Bill Kennedy said Friday that Wilbur’s name will be added to the memorial by the end of November. He also said he thought the work had already been done.

“We’ll have the new one on there,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time and when the engravers can get it done.”

Ivory, 83, said that in the first years after the memorial went up, he didn’t know his brother’s name was incorrect because he didn’t even know the memorial existed. But about four years ago, he learned of the memorial, and the mistake in the process.

He contacted county officials three or four times over the next few years about fixing his brother’s name, but the ball didn’t really get rolling until last spring, when Ivory spoke with County Commissioner John Ostlund. About two months ago, he received a phone call from the commissioners’ office saying that it would get taken care of, but that it could take a while.

“I did meet him and he expressed his concern about that,” Ostlund said of the misspelling. “It absolutely needs to be corrected.”

 

Missing in action

 

Ivory and Wilbur Robinson were born near Cohagen, 25 miles southeast of Jordan, in the mid-1920s, about a year and a half apart. They lived in the area until 1943, when they were in their late teens, and then moved to Billings with their mother. They attended Senior High.

After graduating, Ivory served for about two years in the Navy during World War II as a water tender, third class, on the USS Saratoga. Wilbur was too young to enter the military during the war, but he pitched in around town as best he could.

“People here in Billings liked him,” Ivory said. “Because when he was in high school, he drove a city bus. He was only 17, but they were always needing people during the war.”

When Wilbur graduated from high school in 1946, he decided to stay in Billings. During those years, he developed a love for riding Indian motorcycles because “they were faster than Harleys,” Ivory said. He was popular, didn’t drink or smoke and was never married, his brother said.

“But the ladies were always chasing him,” Ivory said.

He was drafted into the Army to fight in the Korean War in July 1951 and headed overseas just a few months later, in October. Less than two months after arriving, Wilbur was reported missing in action. On Christmas Day the family received word that he was killed in action Oct. 23 at the age of 24, according to an article in the March 6, 1952, edition of the Jordan Tribune.

In February 1952, he was laid to rest at Mountview Cemetery in Billings, where a headstone still marks his grave. Even after the funeral, some family members weren’t completely convinced Wilbur had died because they never received his dog tags and because they didn’t get the chance to view his remains. They had heard stories of other families who found out the bodies sent home for burial weren’t those of their sons.

“I just figured it this way: If he wasn’t killed, he’d show up one day,” Ivory said. “He never did.”

 

‘That’s my brother’

 

Ivory said he’d be happy to have his brother’s name added to the bottom of the list on the memorial’s granite wall, which is exactly what the county commissioners plan on doing, partly because the other option could cost thousands of dollars and take much longer to complete.

“The only way for us to go ahead and change it completely would be to take out that whole section,” Kennedy said. “So now we’re planning on putting the correct spelling up there.”

It’s not exactly clear where the misspelling came from, but it most likely happened while names were being collected to place on the memorial, Kennedy said. When it was first dedicated on Veterans Day in 1997, it included the names of 267 county residents who had been killed in military action from the Spanish-American War through Vietnam.

Sometime by the end of November, Billings Monument, which is one of the only local companies that can do such work and initially helped create the monument, plans to use a stencil to sandblast “Robinson Wilbur” onto the memorial. His name will be along with the other Yellowstone County soldiers who have died in recent American wars, Kennedy said.

That is something Ivory has been awaiting for four years, but looking back through the decades after his brother was killed, he’s been waiting for a little closure even longer.

“I can tell everybody,” he said. “They can look at it and see right there, that name, that’s my brother.”

Contact Zach Benoit at zbenoit@billingsgazette.com or 657-1357.