Henry F. “Hank” Hartwell, 89, a Plymouth resident most of his life, passed away at 4:46 p.m. on Monday, January 9, 2012 in Florida Heartland Hospital, Sebring, Florida
      
       Hank was born on January 27, 1922 in North Vernon, Indiana. He was raised in the Bright-Side Orphanage in Plymouth, and considered Leo & Stella Manuwal his mom and dad. He was a graduate of Plymouth High School.
      
       He was a veteran of W.W. II, enlisting in the U.S. Navy on September 12, 1942 and was discharged on December 11, 1945.
      
       Hank and Nancy Joy Edington were married on October 15, 1954, in South Bend, in spite of loosing Nancy’s wedding dress and the start of their new home to the great Plymouth flood. Nancy preceded Hank in death on November 5, 2007.
      
       He was a manager at American Optical in Plymouth for 28 years, retiring in 1982. He had also worked at shoe stores in Walkerton and Plymouth.
      
       A “very handy man”, Hank was very good at wallpapering, and woodworking. He also was a avid gardener, raising flowers and working in “Hank”s Patch”, a two acre strawberry patch. A dog lover, he was especially fond of his pet dog Mayi, an Australian shepherd-mix.
      
       Hank was a member of Goshen Gift Haus, the Plymouth Lion’s Club and had been a member of Trinity United Methodist Church for over 50 years.
      
       Hank is survived by a daughter: Jane L. (Jim) Williams of Plymouth and granddaughters, Amanda Boener and Abby Williams; a son: Joe A. (Diane) Hartwell of Nappanee and grandson, Tyler; a sister-in-law: Mary Jane Manuwal of Plymouth and several nieces and nephews.
      
       He was preceded in death by his wife, Nancy, two brothers: Raymond Hartwell and John Manuwal and a sister-in-law, Della Jane Hartwell.
      
       The family will receive friends at the Johnson-Danielson Funeral Home, 1100 N. Michigan Street, Plymouth on Saturday, January 14, 2012 from 4 – 7 p.m. Funeral services, officiated by the Rev. Kerry O’Brien, pastor of the Trinity United Methodist Church, will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 15, 2012, in the funeral home.
      
       Burial will follow in the New Oakhill Cemetery, Plymouth, where military honors will be accorded Hank by members of the Plymouth American Legion Post 27, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1162 and the D.A.V.
      
       Memorial contributions in Hank’s memory may be made to the Trinity United Methodist Church 425 S. Michigan St., Plymouth, IN 46563.
      
      
       The following story appeared some years ago in the South Bend Tribune HOMETOWN
       by IDA CHIPMAN
      
      
       For years Henry Francis Hartwell lived on 2.8 acres on the Plymouth-Goshen Trail, Plymouth less than a mile from the site of the Brightside Orphanage where he grew up.
       Brightside was a 270-acre farm, located in the vicinity of Christo's Restaurant on Michigan Street in Plymouth. It consisted of five large buildings for the children and a number of outbuildings for livestock and farm implements.
       "The Julia E. Work Training School is what the orphanage was called," Henry said. "I was one of 280 children living there from all over the state."
       His early memories are sparse. Mostly he remembers how hard he and the others worked.
       He was sent to the orphanage from North Vernon, Ind., when he was about 4. By piecing together his family history it is thought that he and his half brother, John Wahl, became wards of the state when their mother, Eliza, a single parent, was judged mentally or physically unable to care for them.
       An older brother, Raymond, 15 at the time, ran away and joined a circus, rather than be sent to the orphanage.
       "I never heard from him until 1981," Henry said. "Fifty-five-years later, we traced him to Kokomo through a family Bible." The brothers had nine years to get to know one another before Raymond's death in 1990.
       Henry has a photograph of Eliza, the mother whose face he does not remember and whose touch he is unable to recall. The Hartwells have been told that she was part Cherokee Indian. No father's name was listed on Henry's birth certificate. He needed the paper to join the Navy and had a terrible time tracing his roots.
       At some point, his mother married and had three more children: John and two little girls, both of who died in infancy. Eliza died of pneumonia in a state institution in North Vernon.
       "A cousin we found not too many years ago was surprised to meet me," Henry said.
       "We thought you were dead," his relative said. "We had heard you fell in a privy and drowned."
       Life at Brightside, which had moved to Plymouth from LaPorte in 1899, was very disciplined. Henry said the children had a bed, good meals and discipline. Lots of discipline.
       If there was affection shown, Henry doesn't remember any.
       "Everybody worked," Henry said. "The older children took care of the younger ones and all of us worked hard on the farm.
       "We had chickens, cows, orchards, truck gardens. ... I walked behind a plow with horses before there were tractors in Marshall County."
       The orphanage was self-supporting. In addition to growing their own food, they sold surplus produce, eggs, milk and livestock and were give a "per diem" of 35 cents per day for the care of each child from the county government.
       There were contests to see who could pick up the most walnuts. Different churches would send out groups to teach Sunday school on alternating Sundays. Henry remembers going to the Gem Theater at Christmastime. The orphans were treated to "Snow White," the only movie he recalls seeing.
       When he was 14, after a good deal of scheming, Henry and three friends ran away. They jumped a slow-moving train through Plymouth, crawling into an open boxcar. It got cold and the boys wrapped themselves in newspapers to stay warm.
       "We rode and rode," Henry said. "We thought we must surely be in New York, so, at first light, we jumped off as the train slowed down through a town."
       The boys were in Peru, Indiana. New York City it was not.
       The first thing on their minds was filling their teen-age bellies, and they stole a loaf of bread from a bin outside a bakery.
       Four youngsters at that hour of the day caught the attention of the local gendarmes; a police car pulled up beside them.
       "Hungry? Want some breakfast?" the officer said.
       Allowing that they were and probably feeling there was little choice with the "hot" bread still warm in their stomachs, they got in the cruiser and were taken to the police station for questioning.
       Henry believes that it was this interrogation that began the last of a series of investigations of the Brightside Home that led to its eventual closing the following year, 1937.
       He told the police how every Saturday, whether they had misbehaved during the week or not, the children would be lined up for a spanking with a leather strap.
       If a child happened to wet his or her bed, they would be required to walk in a circle with a 2 1/2-gallon bucket full of sand (weighing about 20 pounds each) in each hand.
       A constant verbal threat to children was that if they didn't cooperate, they would be sent to White's Institute. Because it was an unknown to the youngsters, White's was a dreaded substitute for what was the only "home" many of them had ever known.
       John, Henry's younger half brother, was one of the lucky ones. Leo and Stella Manuwal of Plymouth adopted him. When Brightside closed, Henry was scheduled to be sent to work on a farm in southern Indiana. Stella Manuwal found out and took him to live with them, too.
       Henry had never had a bicycle. He had never had an Easter basket ... a birthday party ... or even a good-night kiss until he became a part of the Manuwal family.
       He returned Stella's love by helping around the house: without being asked, he scrubbed floors and raked leaves and did all of the chores he could to show his appreciation to the Manuwals for giving him a nurturing home. After school, he worked for Dr. Keith, a local veterinarian.
       Henry joined the Navy in 1942 and served in the Pacific Theater until '45. He was assigned to a 65-foot crash boat that made up part of the rescue party of downed American pilots at Midway. "We were used as decoys a lot," he said, "and we could outrun anybody."
       When he came home, he and Leo started a war surplus store and the Manuwal Shoe Repair shop. He met his wife, Nancy, who came to Plymouth as Dr. C.H. Dunfee's dental assistant, in January of 1954. She rented an apartment next door to the shoe shop.
       "I took one look at those big brown eyes and fell in love," she said.
       Working for Bob McQueen's TV Tower business, and cleaning commercial floors for $1.50 an hour, kept food on the table until Henry, through Dan Gibson, got a job at American Optical, where he worked for 27 years, retiring as supervisor of 100 employees in 1982.
       He carries no bitterness toward his early beginnings. "My mother," he said, "did the best she could." He and Nancy have visited her grave in North Vernon.
      
       Henry and Nancy Hartwell are now happy together.