[shareprints gallery_id=”35419″ gallery_type=”filmstrip” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”xlarge” image_padding=”0″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”popout” lightbox_type=”fade” captions=”true” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]On October 13, 2013, the Naperville Century Walk dedicated E. M. Visquesney’s statue, The Spirit of the American Navy. The statue was placed appropriately opposite Visquesney’s The Spirit of the American Doughboy in Burlington Square Park – a fitting tribute to the soldiers and sailors from Naperville who fought in the First World War.
Just two blocks east of Burlington Square on the SE corner of Loomis and Fourth is a unique home built entirely of boulders. This home belonged to Leo Koppa, perhaps one of Naperville’s few Navy men who served in WWI.
The home was built by Koppa’s brother-in-law Arthur Miller and hobos using stones gathered from surrounding fields around 1926. Koppa’s parents were married in Germany and came to America in 1882. Koppa was born in Naperville in 1885, a year after his father bought the property. Leo grew up across the railroad tracks watching the Naperville Lounge Factory grow into the world’s largest furniture manufacturing company. In fact, in 1902 at the age of 17, Leo went to work for the Naperville Lounge Company making crates to ship furniture. A 1942 Clarion article reported, “Leo was a packer in the days when everything had to be carried upstairs on the backs.”
When America joined the Allied Forces in 1917, Leo Koppa joined the U.S. Navy. He sent several postcards back to his family in Naperville. After serving overseas, Leo returned to Naperville and the furniture factory, now called Kroehler Manufacturing Company. In 1933 Koppa became a night watchmen at the factory, a position he held in 1958 when he was awarded a 55-year service pin.
Leo Koppa, a parishioner of Ss. Peter & Paul and one of just a few WW I Navy men from Naperville passed away in 1962.
