The Reporting Project’s 10-over-60: Doug Stout wants to remember all the veterans, not just the heroes

The first veteran that Doug Stout ever interviewed served in World War II.

“What do you want people to remember about your service?” Stout asked the veteran.

 “Nobody’s gonna care about the World War II veteran,” the veteran responded.

Stout was shocked by the veteran’s answer.

“I don’t want them forgotten,” Stout said.

Stout, 63, is a Newark, Ohio native and the history coordinator at the Licking County Library. He researches everything in the county. 10 years ago he helped create a database of veterans in Licking County. 

In 2011, it was the Civil War sesquicentennial and some local programs were started to commemorate veterans. The director at the Licking County Library, Babbette Wofter, knew that Stout was interested in the Civil War and asked him to help with the program. 

“What ended up happening is, through the programs we were doing people would come … they just want to share the story of their family members in the Civil War, or in any war,” Stout said.

While Stout was collecting stories he realized there was no database to record all the veterans from Licking County. So he made it himself. In the past 10 years he has found 10,000 veterans from the Revolutionary War to the present who at some point lived in Licking County.

“There’s not a conflict, battlefield that you can name, that I can’t find, that I haven’t found Licking County in there,” he said. 

The only veteran Stout ever heard of was John Clem, from Newark, Ohio, who was known as a little drummer boy in the Civil War. Disney produced a movie called Drummer Shiloh based on John Clem, and called him the youngest drummer boy. Stout said Clem was 11 years old, but he found out there was a younger boy born in Licking County named Albert White who was a 9-year-old drummer boy.

Stout has discovered many stories. He found out that two men died at Pearl Harbor from Licking County, and there was a French teacher from Newark High School, Janet Jones, who was a telephone girl in World War I. He wondered why no one had taught him about these veterans in school. 

Stout says they have a pretty good list of veterans on the database, but it’s not everybody. He is still searching for soldiers who died while they were in service, POWs and MIAs. He has been able to find some of these veterans but he knows there are still more to find. 

“I would have thought somebody was keeping track, and just nobody was,” Stout said.

In 2020, Dennis McKnew, a local Vietnam veteran, passed away. He lived alone and had no family around. The veteran’s neighbor decided to give him a funeral and reached out to Stout for help. Stout posted on Facebook that a Vietnam veteran about the funeral, and people flocked to honor the veteran. 

“It was nice that just this man was going to have some respect … he wasn’t forgotten,” Stout said. 

Jeff Gill, a former Marine and currently serving as pastor at Woodside Presbyterian in Newark, said a few words at the funeral. He was impressed that about 200 citizens showed up even during COVID restrictions.

“I’m just so impressed by his passion for the community in general and for honoring veterans in particular,” Gill said.  “People just turned out, and they just said, you know, I only know one thing about him, but he served, and I know that because of Doug Stout.”

Columbus news channels covered the funeral. A man saw the broadcast and said he served with the veteran. He lived in Lancaster, Ohio and didn’t know he had died. He came and brought a picture of them together.

“Doug wants to make sure that the people who often get left out of the story because they’re not the big names that they are marked and honored as well,” Gill said. 

Stout went to barber school, but always had a passion for history. Both of his parents loved history, and he believes he got his motivation to do research from his dad who was a reporter at the Columbus Dispatch.

“We never went on a vacation that wasn’t something to do with history,” he said. 

Stout also gives ghost stories at the Licking County Library. The job requires him to take note of tragedies that have happened in Newark so he can tell the scary stories during the tours. 

For example, Stout found that in 1913 there was a fire at a hotel in downtown Newark where five people burned to death. The fire was proven to be arson because the owner wanted to collect insurance money on a piano that was in the building. Stout kept that story in his back pocket for his tours. 

“I see dead people around downtown,” he said. “Pretty much every place I go.”

“There’s just so much history here,” Stout said.

This story was updated at 8:45 a.m. on Friday, July 4, 2025 to correct Jeff Gill’s current role. The Reporting Project regrets the error.

Caroline Zollinger wrote for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. After graduation, Caroline joined the staff at Garden & Gun in Charleston, South Carolina as a print editorial intern.