There is a monograph shelved in Special Collections with the title “George Evans Turnure Jr.: Flight Log and War Letters.” It was compiled and privately printed by Turnure’s brother Lawrence in 1936; only 20 copies were printed.
Lawrence described his brother’s military service in the Introduction:
“George Evans Turnure, Jr., son of Elizabeth Gardiner Lanier, and George Evans Turnure, was born in Lenox, Massachusetts, on July Thirteenth, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety Six.
He attended Fay and Groton Schools, and entered Harvard University, which he left in Nineteen Hundred and Sixteen for military training at Plattsburg. Impatient for active service, he left Plattsburg for France, where he joined the American Ambulance Corps, a group of young Americans sympathetic with the French cause, early in Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen. He then transferred, on February Sixteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen, to the Franco-American Flying Corps, later known as the Lafayette Flying Corps. On January Second, Nineteen Hundred and Eighteen, almost one year after the United States entered the World War, he transferred from the then called Lafayette Escadrille to the American Air Service and was commissioned a First Lieutenant.” There is a list of Lt. Turnure’s awards and citations, which include a Legion d’Honneur medal and a Croix de Guerre with two Palms and a Star.
The monograph includes Lt. Turnure’s letters sent home from France. In them he described his military exploits, shooting down German planes with Spads of various horse-powers. The letters also include more mundane matters, like the one sent to his mother stating his intention to thank Mrs. Alexandre [of Spring Lawn] for the Christmas gift of American cigarettes. Evidently, the French cigarettes were terrible, and gave “you a sore throat in no time.” Photographs of Lt. Turnure are liberally sprinkled throughout, along with his citations.
Lt. Turnure survived the war and the 1918 influenza which followed the close of the war. However, in 1920 he contracted pneumonia after attending the Harvard-Yale football game, and died on November 13 at the age of twenty-four. He was buried at Church on the Hill cemetery; his headstone is decorated with the motifs of the Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre medals.
Major George Evans Turnure Sr. funded the new building for the Lenox Brotherhood Club in his son’s memory. It was designed by Harding and Seaver (who designed the Town Hall) and built by the Clifford Co. The new clubhouse was dedicated December 29, 1923. The building was turned over to the Town of Lenox in 1955, for use as a Community Center, with Thomas Bosworth as its first director.
