Charles Tustison - Major

Biography

Charles H. Tustison was born in Yates Center, Kansas on May 11, 1910, the youngest of
four children to Charles C. and Dora Tustison. He graduated from Yates Center High School in
1928. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1929 to 1930 and entered Iowa
State University at Ames, Iowa in 1930. He graduated there in 1934 with a B.S. degree in Forestry
and commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U. S. Army Reserves. He was employed at the U.S.

Forest Products Laboratory in Madison in 1935 and also attended the University of Wisconsin do-
ing graduate work in Soils. It was at the Forest Products Lab that he met Pearl Moore. Pearl

Moore was from Lone Rock, Wisconsin. They were married in 1935. In 1936 a son, Charles J.
Tustison was born and in 1937 they relocated to Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills, Wisconsin where
he was at a CCC Camp and was teaching soil conservation techniques to the local farmers. A
daughter, Patricia M. Tustison was born in 1938.
In 1940 Charles was at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma as a field artillery instructor and his family was in
neighboring Lawton. In 1942 they moved to Paris, Texas where he trained troops at nearby
Camp Maxey. In 1944 he was assigned to the 533 Field Artillery Battalion at Camp Hood, Texas
as executive officer and the family made their home at nearby Gatesville, Texas. It was at Camp
Hood (now Fort Hood) that Major Tustison lost his life in a plane crash on May 22, 1945. He was
buried at Button Cemetery near Lone Rock, Wisconsin.