Walter S. Dilatush (1853-1895)

FUNERAL OF JUDGE DILATUSH.

Judge Walter S. Dilatush died at his home near Lebanon, about one o'clock Wednesday morning. The funeral services will be held at the Presbyterian church in Lebanon, at half past one o'clock on Friday. Friends will meet at the residence at half-past twelve. It is expected that all the ministers of the town will be present and assist. The services will probably be short. The interment will take place at South Lebanon. The casket will not be opened at the church. It will be sealed before leaving the residence. Jude Dilatush was a member of several of the secret societies but it is understood that none of these will turn out as societies, but their members will, as individuals, attend the services.

Source: "Funeral of Judge Dilatush," obituary, Western Star (Lebanon, Ohio), Thursday, October 3, 1895
Copy from the Obituary Collection at the Warren County Genealogical Society,

by
Arne H Trelvik
26 September 2015

Walter S. Dilatush (1853-1895)

DEATH OF JUDGE WALTER S. DILATUSH.

Walter S. Dilatush was born on the farm of his grand-father, N. V. Dilatush, in Union Township, Warren County, on the 28th day of October, 1853, a little less than forty-two years ago. On this old homestead he spent his boyhood days.

At the age of twenty, in the same township, he taught the Washington public school. The pupils of this school, only last month, arranged for a reunion, in which their dear teacher was assigned a prominent part, which his fatal illness prevented him from performing.

A country school will not long hold such a boy, either as a student or as a teacher. At the age of twenty-three he was graduated from the scientific course of the South western Normal School, and a year later from the classic course of the same institution, receiving the highest honors of both. And what a loyal friend he was of this famous school all the rest of his life.

Two years later, at the age of twenty-six, he came home – and this county was ever his home – with the Diploma of the law department of the Iowa State University, in which his record as a student gave rich promise of the honorable success as a lawyer which marked his short but brilliant career at the Ohio bar.

In 1891, at the age of thirty-eight, he was elected to the only public office for which he was ever a candidate, that of Common Pleas Judge, which position he held at the time of his death, Wednesday, October 2, 1895.

This, all too briefly, as his life was all to brief, is the record of a noble life, the early end of which is sincerely mourned today by all the people of Warren County, and by other thousands in the larger area beyond who were just coming to know the sterling worth of our friend and fellow citizen.

Manly as a boy, he was preeminently so in his maturer years. Polite and deferential as a boy, in age he was every inch and in every act, the gentleman. Kind hearted in youth, his contact with the rugged issues of life seemed to make him even kinder still, and to the last, better than all the titles which he achieved, were the beauty, and kindness, and sweetness of his lovable character.

As a judge, he worked hard always to be right. This there is none to dispute. Today there is neither client, nor lawyer, nor citizen, not one in all the counties in which he held court, to say that he ever was other than the upright and conscientious judge. He gives back the judicial ermine as spotless as the pure life that so sadly closed in the white starlight of Wednesday morning.

Walter S. Dilatush, on the 21st day of August, 1879, was married to Annie Bone, of whom it need only be said that she was the fit companion of such a man. Into the portals of her desolated home the public cannot go, further that to know that she is there today in the fresh torrent of a grief none know who have not passed through it, while leaning upon her and winding their arms about her neck, are six fatherless children – Irene fifteen, Ida fourteen, Henry nine, Mary eight, Frank four, Carl two – in whose faces there is the reflex of the gentle spirit that has just gone back to its God as pure as when He gave it to dwell a little while upon the earth.

Source: "Death of Judge Dilatush ," obituary, Western Star (Lebanon, Ohio), Thursday, October 3, 1895
Copy from the Obituary Collection at the Warren County Genealogical Society,

by
Arne H Trelvik
26 September 2015