Jason Euge was on his property atop the bluffs in rural St. Clair County Monday, cleaning up what he could and organizing whichever of his father’s sculptures could be salvaged.
At his back, just a few feet away, was the burned out shell of the railroad caboose where his dad, Robert “Kenny” Euge, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, had died.
“You pick up the pieces and move on, I guess,” Jason said with a choked voice. “I’m trying to drag some of his art out, get some of the trash cleaned up.”
The St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department responded to the scene in the 1200 block of Mule Road at 12:24 p.m. Saturday, said Lt. James Hendricks. When deputies arrived, they encountered heavy fire and smoke, he said.
Firefighters from Dupo, Millstadt and Prairie du Pont responded to the call to assist the Columbia Fire Department.
Kenny Euge, 75, a retired switchman from the Terminal Railroad, was found inside the caboose and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. The Illinois State Fire Marshal’s office is investigating the cause of the fire.
Jason Euge, 48, lives on the property, too, directly beneath the caboose in a subterranean shelter that was somehow spared the flames.
“I was below him in my house when he was burning to death right above me and I didn’t even realize it,” he said.
The family moved to the property on that winding chat road above the Mississippi River flood plain in 1979. Euge’s other two children, Shaina and Dominic, moved away when they grew up.
But it was a years-long battle for Kenny and Jason to stay.
Home for Kenny Euge was that bright red railroad caboose, which was situated on an enclave of old vehicles, rusty barrels and sculptures he had created from junkyard scraps.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, remnant of the firefights he took part in amid the highlands and valleys near the Cambodian border, had left him 70% disabled. Sculpture became his therapy.
But neighbors complained to St. Clair County about the vividly colored scraps of metal and plastic bolted together that adorned Euge’s yard.
Citations had been written and neighbor threatened a lawsuit, Jason Euge said. The most recent of those complaints was dismissed in 2020, according to St. Clair County Circuit Court records.
In 2009, though, county zoning officials sent Kenny Euge a letter warning he’d be evicted if he didn’t make immediate improvements.
“It’s always been a fight. Just every day was a fight,” said Jason, one of Kenny Euge’s three children. “Back then they started on the old man because he had this train here and, literally, it was (expletive) court case after court case after court case. …
“We fought in court about this (expletive) caboose then it turned into the yard.”
On the same day the eviction letter arrived, Euge also received a delivery from John Poindexter, a Houston millionaire and the hard-charging commander of Alpha Troop, First Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, some 39 years earlier.
Poindexter’s letter informed Euge that he and other Alpha Troop members had been selected to receive the Presidential Unit Citation, a rare honor bestowed on military units that have shown extraordinary courage and determination under the most deadly conditions.
The citation recognizes Alpha Troop’s actions during a battle that unfolded on March 25-26, 1970. Outnumbered 3-to-1, Alpha Troop’s tanks and armored personnel carriers extracted 100 American soldiers trapped amid a North Vietnamese Army bunker complex, while inflicting heavy losses on an enemy battalion.
In October 2009, Euge and his comrades were in the White House Rose Garden, being decorated by President Barack Obama.
In an article published in the Belleville News-Democrat in August of that year, Poindexter said the citation was important because it is emblematic of “the entire generation of soldiers during the Vietnam era who were not recognized for their valor.”
The men of Alpha Troop, he said, “deserve as much recognition as anybody else, and it’s a blank spot in our history. Those men would have been lost.”
Kenny Euge did his part in the battle by taking the controls of an Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle, or ACAV, which carried .50-caliber machine guns and two M-60 light machine guns.
Joe Galloway, a former Vietnam War correspondent and columnist at the Washington, D.C. bureau of McClatchy, which owns the BND, lauded Euge’s military record for the 2009 article.
“He had probably survived a couple dozen major battles,” said Galloway, who died in 2021. “He had seen half or more of his battalion mates killed. He was the very essence of a veteran.”
But back at home in St. Clair County, Euge’s service wasn’t widely recognized and the artistic means he employed to deal with its aftershocks weren’t much appreciated.
Not that he cared much.
“His thought was ‘This is my property, I pay the bills, I pay the taxes, I can do whatever the (expletive) I want to do,’” Jason Euge said. “And he was like that with everything.
“It’s an interesting way to be. Sometimes it’s reckless and self-detrimental. Sometimes it’s exactly how you need to be. But he was extremely smart and extremely articulate, but also extremely childish and extremely stubborn. It’s tough. There’s a fine line there.”
Kenny Euge negotiated with the county in 2009 and, despite ongoing complaints and that additional petty violation citation in 2020, he called the caboose home for another 15 years.
“I’ll make them think I’m normal when they drive by …,” he told the BND at the time, “but I’m not in that society and I haven’t been for a long time.”
Euge is survived by two additional children, Shaina C. (Brandon Riley) Euge, and Dominic R. (Claire Di Lorenzo) Euge. According to his obituary from Leesman Funeral Home in Columbia, he also is survived by four grandchildren, two sisters and a “dear friend,” Elizabeth.
A private family burial with military honors will be held at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis. Euge’s family is asking that memorial contributions be sent to Wounded Warrior Project, 230 W. Monroe St., Suite 200, Chicago, IL 60606.
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Joshua Carter, Todd Eschman and Carolyn P. Smith report for the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
