Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
MSGT William (Bill) A. Wilk
July 20, 1947 - November 30, 2012
Bill was born July 20th 1947 in Dowagiac County, New Hampshire. He attended Monadnock Regional High School.
Bill joined the United States Army in October of 1966 and graduated basic training in February of 1967. Bill then went to serve in the Vietnam counteroffensive phase II,III,IV,V&VI /TET counteroffensive/ TET 69 counteroffensive. While serving in Vietnam Bill was the recipient of 3 Purple Heart Awards. Bill left the service at the end of 1969 and then re-enlisted in July of 1971 were he received his training in EOD and served until he retired in April of 1991.
After retiring from the Army he worked as a consultant with Environmental Chemical Corp. where he worked in the Kuwaiti desert removing unexploded ordinance left by the Iraqi Army for 2 years.
Bill then worked at Intel for many years.
Bill loved motorcycles and riding where ever he could. He was a Ride Captain for the N.M. Patriot Guard Riders and attended many missions honoring his fellow veterans and active duty military. Whether it was saying goodbye or welcoming troops home he stood tall and proud.
Bill is survived by his Life Partner Sylvia Koepke Rude, her children, Audrey Lujan and Drew Koepke, and two daughters, Stacey Lee Wilk and Shannon Dee Wilk.
A Celebration of Life will be held Saturday, December 15, 2012 from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the American Legion Post 118, 1500 Barbara Loop SE, Rio Rancho, NM. In lieu of flowers it is requested that donations be made in memory of William A. Wilk to: New Mexico Patriot Guard Riders, P.O. Box 1633, Cuba, NM 87013 or Paws & Stripes, P.O. Box 46253, Rio Rancho, NM 87174.
Daniels Family Funeral Services
2400 Southern Blvd
Rio Rancho, NM 87124
505-891-9192 In Memory of William A. Wilk
I wonder how many people know that over 1000 WW11 veterans die every day. Their bravery and sacrifice and what they did for our country should be remembered in eternity.
I am Bill's daughter. I am saddened by how our Vietnam Vets were treated when they came home; have we ever really made up for what we did to them? Now, we appreciate, console, help, revere, those who come home and I am thankful that we have finally realized how important our Veterans are - but please do not forget those who were left alone-to suffer in silence. I don't think I ever truly understood what he went through, and now, I wish that I had taken the time to really know him and his demons. I know that he is now, up in heaven, watching over me and his loved ones...finally at peace.
Thank you to everyone in New Mexico-especially Sylvia and her family-for being there for my father, when the rest of us were not. Thank you for recognizing our Vietnam Vets and all that they survived.
I love you Dad. Be at peace now.
I had the privledge of briefly meeting Senator Inouye in the late 80's while a group of us were at a military event in the D.C. area. I was impressed with his friendliness. It wasn't until later that the Sergeant Major told us some of the Senators life story...
The Obituary is an interesting read, thanks for sharing Gil3.
I'm trying to clean out the garage and I keep opening boxes only to find a hodgepodge of photos, receipts, greeting cards... and personal correspondence.
I remember him as being quiet, polite, respectful. He was a good man.
I was the late SFC Paul Ray Smith's platoon sergeant when he was a Sgt/E-5. Later on he cemented his legacy at Baghdad International Airport. I was disappointed at the ways he's honored at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. I hope the museum at Ft. Stewart, Georgia did a better job. My memories of Paul are as clear as day. Interested parties would do well to read Zeno Gamble's article on Paul. My feelings towards the soldier will never be justified by words alone.
Norman Hendrickson was known for telling jokes and never wasting money. So when he died suddenly while en route to his wife's funeral, the couple's daughters knew there was only one thing to do: Hold a doubleheader service.
The 94-year-old World War II veteran's impromptu wake was held Saturday at the same eastern New York funeral home where his wife Gwen's funeral was already scheduled. She was 89 when she died on Feb. 8. After Norman died just steps from the funeral home, the daughters decided their parents would be mourned together at the same time.
The daughters said it was a fitting way to say goodbye to a couple who had been together since meeting in Europe during World War II and who had been married for nearly 66 years.
"After we had a little time to process the shock and horror, we felt we couldn't have written a more perfect script," Norma Howland told the Post-Star of Glens Falls. "My sister said the only thing he didn't do was fall into the casket."
Norman, a former assistant postmaster in Cambridge, 35 miles northeast of Albany, was being driven in a limousine to the Ackley and Ross Funeral Home for his wife's service when he stopped breathing. After the limo pulled up, funeral director Jim Gariepy, who is also the local coroner, and funeral home owner Elizabeth Nichols-Ross helped move Norman to the sidewalk outside the business.
Gariepy began CPR while Nichols-Ross and one of Norman's sons-in-law raced across town to retrieve his do-not-resuscitate orders from the Hendricksons' refrigerator door. Once the orders were in hand, an emergency crew that had arrived ceased attempts to revive Norman. He died on the sidewalk.
Nichols-Ross said daughter Merrilyne Hendrickson then requested that her father's body be put into a casket and placed in the viewing room with her mother's cremated remains, which had been placed in an urn. Mourners who started arriving soon after for Gwen's funeral were greeted by a note Merrilyne posted at the entrance: "Surprise — It's a double-header — Gwen and Norman Hendrickson — Feb. 16, 2013."
Nichols-Ross said she didn't charge the family for Norman's wake. On his prayer card, she jokingly wrote that Hendrickson got the idea to die in the limo headed to the funeral so he could get "a buy-one-get-one-free deal."
"If it had happened with somebody else like this it would have been sad, but with Norm it wasn't," Nichols-Ross said. "It was just so much like Norm."
Norman was overseas with the U.S. Army when he met Gwen, who was serving in the British Royal Air Force. She immigrated to the U.S. and they were married in May 1947.
Howland said her parents had jokingly promised to never leave one spouse behind. After her mother died, Howland said she overheard her father say aloud, "We have had a good long life together. I love you. I'll miss you and watch for me."
Mildred Dalton Manning grew up poor on a Georgia farm. She attended nursing school during the Depression and became a nurse at a hospital in Atlanta. She enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1939. “I joined the Army to see the world,” she told The Courier News of Bridgewater, N.J., some 60 years later. “And what I saw was a prison camp.” She was among the Army and Navy nurses of World War II known collectively as the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor. When the Japanese were overrunning the Philippines in early 1942, the nurses treated wounded, dying and disease-ridden soldiers under heavy enemy fire, in one of the darkest chapters of American military history. A total of 66 Army nurses were taken into captivity by the Japanese after the Americans’ final outpost, on the island of Corregidor, fell in May 1942. They spent most of the war under guard at Japan’s Santo Tomas internment camp for foreign nationals in Manila, where they faced near-starvation and were ravaged by disease and malnutrition while treating nearly 4,000 men, women and children. When Mrs. Manning died on Friday in Hopewell, N.J., at 98, she was the last survivor of the Army and Navy nurses who had been captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.Mrs. Manning — Lt. Mildred Dalton during the war — and her fellow nurses subsisted on one or two bowls of rice a day in the last stages of their imprisonment. She lost all her teeth to lack of nutrition.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
