Sadly, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C. includes names of more than 19,000 men and women who were killed in the line of duty. Ten of those names are officers who served the Pennsylvania Game Commission, including Robert E. Zimmerman, 35, Shiremanstown, who was added in May.

Zimmerman was killed in a vehicle accident near Danville May 13, 1957; staff learned of his death from an article in an old Pennsylvania Game News magazine. Closer to home, another name on the memorial is Joseph McHugh, fatally shot in Weatherly in 1915. PGC Northeast Region Information and Education supervisor Jack Weaver researched McHugh’s story.

“In the agency’s formative years, a virtual state of war existed between those who continued to violate the game law and the early officers who dared to enforce them,” Weaver wrote. Here’s McHugh’s story:

Joseph McHugh was 40 and working as a Prudential Insurance agent when he was appointed a game protector on June 1, 1915. He and his wife Isabella had three children.

McHugh got a report of people hunting on a Sunday in an area behind the railroad tower at Hazle Creek junction. The following Sunday, Nov. 11, 1915, he and a friend William Brown walked down the Beaver Meadows track to the general area.

They heard the sound of dogs chasing game and headed that way. They soon encountered Francis Thomas, who was carrying a shotgun. McHugh identified himself and asked Thomas to unload the gun. Instead, Thomas took a step or two back and shot McHugh in the chest.

Thomas jacked another shell into the firing chamber and aimed at Brown, doing that twice, but both times the gun failed to fire. Brown began to walk away, holding his hands over his head, ignoring Thomas’s requests that he turn around. When Brown believed himself to be out of shotgun range, he ran for help.

Help arrived but McHugh never regained consciousness. His body was taken to his home in Weatherly. Law enforcement personnel found Thomas, in bed, at his home in Drifton and took him into custody. He confessed at that time but would later say that the gun discharged accidentally. Thomas was taken by train to Weatherly, where an angry mob estimated to be about 500 people waited for the train.

Fearing for Thomas’s safety, officers decided to move him to the then Mauch Chunk, and sneaked him out a side door of the Weatherly firehouse. The trial was held in January 1916. Thomas was represented by three defense attorneys, J.M. Breslin, William Thomas, and J.M. Carr. On January 15, 2016, the jury returned with a “Not Guilty” verdict.

The McHugh’s family story and service to the game commission didn’t end there. Isabella and the children moved to stay with relatives in Elizabeth, New Jersey. For several years, Isabella McHugh wrote to the game commission seeking a job. She was eventually hired as a postal clerk in the agency’s Harrisburg office, where she served for 24 years before retiring. Joseph McHugh is buried in the small cemetery behind the Roman Catholic Church in Weatherly.

This Memorial Day, as we remember our fallen members of the Armed Forces, let’s also remember all the proud men and women whose names grace the Fallen Officers Memorial.