A family of service

Quincy clan counts 24 veterans

MOSES LAKE — Dietrich and Emma Thiesfeld’s 14 children could just about constitute an army in themselves. “Seven of them are or were veterans, and the other seven married veterans,” said Leland “Lee” Thiesfeld, 84 and the 10th of those children, who served in the Marine Corps in the early 1960s. Lee and his wife Charlene live in Moses Lake, where they raised their four children, one of whom followed his father into the USMC. Some of those overlap, like Lee’s oldest sister Elverda, who both served in the Navy and married a Marine, he said. Between the siblings and their children, the Thiesfeld family tree holds 24 military vets. Ironically, their father Dietrich never served, Lee said. “In the First World War, he got an exemption for farming,” he said. “He had to help on the farm. In those days, 60%, 70% of the population was farmers. Nowadays it isn’t even 10%.”