The Glidden Public Library is inviting a well-known military historian next weekend to honor the 100-year anniversary of the town’s most famous citizen, Pvt. Merle David Hay. At 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 4, Camp Dodge Historian, Michael Vogt, will present a program at the library that will detail the life and death of Hay. Following the program, the Glidden American Legion Auxiliary will lay a wreath at the Merle Hay gravesite in the West Lawn Cemetery in Glidden. Hay is remembered as the first Iowan, and possibly American, serviceman to die in combat during World War I. Hay died on Nov. 3, 1917 while fighting in the trenches near Artois, France.
