Native Soil, Foreign Flag
By Matthew Clifford
Gottfried Guennel in high school. Courtesy of Ancestry.
Gottfried Guennel working on the yearbook. Courtesy of Ancestry.
Guennel later in life. Courtesy of Colorado Community Media.
Gottfried Kurt Guennel
December 24, 1920 – May 13, 2013
After World War One, Germany was a miserable place to live. Inflation was through the roof, the nation’s military was limited, and people starved in the streets. It was a very difficult environment to deal with, and it was this environment that Gottfried Kurt Guennel (who also went by Joe later in life) was born into, only a week before 1921 on December 24, 1920, in Oelsnitz, Germany.[1] His Father moved to the United States in 1928 to work for a currency that was more stable than the borderline worthless Marks that circulated through Germany. After six years of waiting, Gottfried and his mother Klara were able to come to the United States to join him, ending up in Bangor, Pennsylvania.[2]
Guennel seemed to have few problems adjusting to a new American life. During his time in high school, Gottfried became very involved in numerous clubs at Bangor High School. He was part of the football, baseball, and basketball teams during his senior year, and was also a member of his school’s chapter of National Honor Society, being both the Secretary and Treasurer during his junior year and President in his senior year. He rounded out his list of clubs with four years of orchestra and four years on the yearbook team, with yearbook seeming to be a passion of his.[3]
Once he graduated high school, Guennel went to college, and around this time, tensions were brewing internationally. Hitler had begun his invasion of Europe, but in the United States, it was seemingly business as usual. In the fall of 1939, Gottfried began attending Butler University in Indianapolis, a noticeable shift from his small town on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania. Here, at Butler University, Guennel studied botany, but split his time between this and the different clubs he found time to help. He was a staff member for both The Drift and Bulldog, which were the yearbook and humor newspaper of Butler, respectively. During his senior year at Butler, Guennel would be the primary art editor for the Drift, in charge of its numerous division pages throughout.[4] Meanwhile, his German roots shone through, despite the global circumstances, as he was the president of the German Club on Butler’s campus, where the members would converse in German and discuss different parts of German culture, including music and literature.[5]
Following his time at Butler, Guennel would become a part of the US military, bringing an invaluable resource with him: his knowledge of the German language. After joining the Army Reserves, he was quickly sent over to help the war effort in Europe, where he received training in interrogation techniques. Using his skills as a German speaker, and the skills taught by the military, Guennel would question German prisoners of war for information on the Germany military. Guennel was part of the group called the “Ritchie Boys,” a group of US Army soldiers who were trained at Camp Ritchie to use their native European languages, such as German or Italian, in order to help the war effort in Europe. They were roughly 20,000 strong, with around 2,000 of them being German Jews who had been forced out of Germany. The group has been recognized many times for their immense efforts in the war, one of the most notable occurring in 2022, when the US Holocaust Memorial Museum “named the Ritchie Boys as the recipient of the museum’s highest honor, the Elie Wiesel award.”[6]
After the war was over, Guennel returned briefly to Germany as a civilian, where he met his wife, Hilde.[7] Joe would then return to Indiana, obtaining his doctorate in Palynology, the study of ancient plants. During his time at the university, Guennel would begin the Indiana University Soccer Club, something he began because of a blossoming love for the sport of soccer and support from foreign students at the university.[8] His love for soccer had taken root when he was a child in Germany, but it truly grew during his military service. Being in Germany after the war, Guennel was inspired by the boys he saw playing soccer, despite the effects of the war, and was reminded of his German youth.[9] Following his founding of the university’s club team, he would found multiple conferences across the Midwest[10] before taking his talents to Colorado. Initially, he moved to Colorado to begin his employment with Marathon Oil Company, where his degree was used to help determine where oil may be based on the local flora.[11] Here in Colorado, he would create multiple soccer leagues, with a large focus on youth soccer. Guennel became an extremely strong advocate for soccer becoming a sanctioned sport in high schools across Colorado, not stopping until “the Colorado High School Activities Association sanctioned [it] in 1971.”[12] He was inducted into both the National Soccer Hall of Fame and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame for his work creating numerous soccer leagues across the United States and for being a massive advocate for the sport. No matter what he did, whether it was working on the yearbook, studying plants, or leading soccer teams and leagues, he gave it everything he had, making the world a better place with it.
Footnotes ↓
[1] “U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947.” 1942. Ancestry. February 16, 1942. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/search/collections/2238/records/41205661.
[2] “New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957.” 1934. Ancestry. September 10, 1934. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/search/collections/7488/records/2017541288.
[3] “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016.” 1939. Ancestry. 1939. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/search/collections/1265/records/396889229.
[4] “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016.” 1943. Ancestry. 1943. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/search/collections/1265/records/234742283.
[5] “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016.” 1942. Ancestry. 1942. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/search/collections/1265/records/1465346037.
[6] “Ritchie Boys.” 2022. Holocaust Encyclopedia. April 15, 2022. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ritchie-boys.
[7] Ellingboe, Sonya. 2023. “Beloved Guennel Left Big Mark.” Colorado Community Media. July 6, 2023. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://coloradocommunitymedia.com/2013/05/21/beloved-guennel-left-big-mark/.
[8] “Life Is a Game – Adventures of a World War II Interrogator and U.S. Soccer Pioneer.” 2022. Cable Publishing. November 15, 2022. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://cablepublishing.com/product/life-is-a-game/.
[9] Ibid
[10] National Soccer Hall of Fame. n.d. “G. K. Guennel.” Accessed August 15, 2025. https://www.nationalsoccerhof.com/builders/g-k-guennel.html.
[11] “Life Is a Game – Adventures of a World War II Interrogator and U.S. Soccer Pioneer.”
[12] “G. K. ‘Joe’ Guennel.” n.d. Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://www.coloradosports.org/hall-of-fame/athletes/1992-inductees/g-k-joe-guennel/.
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