While dusting the fireplace mantel in the kitchen of her newly purchased home on Wednesday, Jacqueline D. Antonovich noticed a box way in the back. She cleaned off the dust and opened the box.
The lettering indicated it was a World War II gas casualty first aid kit. For Antonovich, a Muhlenberg College assistant history professor, her first reaction was joy, akin to an exuberant child getting ready to tear into Christmas gifts.
She expected to find various medical equipment from 75 years ago that would dovetail nicely with her work as a historian of health and medicine.
What she found inside took her aback: a Nazi flag. Then she tweeted out her concerns.
“Uh oh! S—. This is not looking good. Is that what I think it is? Please don’t be some old dude’s racist collection … please!”
But she soon realized that American soldiers must have captured the flag; their signatures appear on it, including one from an Anthony Belpanno of Brooklyn. He also wrote in capital letters: “MAY THIS FLAG NEVER FLY AGAIN.”
So how did Antonovich happen to end up with such a find? She and her husband, Michael, recently purchased the old stone farmhouse in Lower Macungie Township where she was dusting the mantle. The family who had lived there was “very into history,” she said, which helped draw her to the home.
The medical kit and contents are believed to belong to Sgt. Dean M. McKittrick, who lived in Catasauqua, and who served in the Army’s 385th Infantry as a medical technician. He married Marion Elizabeth Greene on Dec. 15, 1945 — mere months after the war’s end — and settled in the borough.
McKittrick (who died Sept. 9, 2003) and his late wife had no children, according to a Morning Call obituary, but a niece of the McKittricks lived in the home and had saved Dean McKittrick’s items, including the flag.
Antonovich said Thursday that she spoke with Brian McKittrick, Dean McKittrick’s nephew and Catasauqua’s council vice president, who gave his permission for her to keep the medical kit and its contents.
Brian McKittrick said another councilman spotted Antonovich’s tweets and contacted him.
“I just told her she could use that for her Muhlenberg classes,” Brian McKittrick said.
The flag of Germany during the era of dictator Adolf Hitler, with its familiar red and black, and swastika on a white disc, has been the most intriguing discovery thus far, Antonovich said. Underneath it was a treasure of odds and ends.
The Muhlenberg professor said seeing the captured flag with the names of American soldiers left her feeling “incredibly moved.” She hopes to find a suitable place to show it, perhaps a local museum.
“I think it’s a very controversial but important piece of history that needs to be preserved and put into context,” she said. “And as my experience finding this demonstrates, these things can end up in anybody’s hands. For me, it would be important to have it in the right hands for teaching purposes.”
Joseph Garrera, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Museum, said medical kits, other war memorabilia and even Nazi flags are easy to find.
“A lot of servicemen brought it back as souvenirs,” he said of the flag, “then as time went on, they realized it was not a good thing. So they kept it hidden away.”
Garrera said promoting the flag reminds many of the horrific crimes against humanity caused by the Nazis.
“We’re not looking to dignify anything related to Nazi Germany,” he said.
To Antonovich, it’s also an interesting tale of the intersection of history and social media.
Antonovich, who has tweeted about her find — she has more than 13,000 followers — was heartened by the social media communication.
“What’s been amazing to me is all the citizen sleuths and amateur historians who have been researching this and putting together all the pieces,” she said. “For me as a historian, it’s been a really fun experience, to watch everybody go down the rabbit hole and sort of find joy in the process of doing historical research.”
And Antonovich, who moved to the Lehigh Valley in 2018 for the job at Muhlenberg, hopes someday to find out the exact origin and history of the house.
“That’s the fun thing about this house.” she said. “It’s just been full of little, old historical mysteries.”
Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone can be reached at 610-820-6694 or asalamone@mcall.com.
