California vet pays tribute to Chippewa Falls man killed in WWII
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By ROD STETZER
rod.stetzer@lee.net
Thursday, July 24, 2008 4:50 PM CDT
Two years ago, Bud Erickson found a big brown envelope in his home in Visalia, Calif. Inside the envelope was a flag. And it left Erickson wondering what he should do next.
The flag had been used to drape over the remains of Leonard Sill, a Chippewa Falls native who died in a plane crash during World War II.
Erickson, now 88 and a World War II veteran himself, had to do something to honor a brave man he had never met.
He had Leonard Sill’s memorial flag because of another Chippewa Falls resident, a war widow he grew to love.
Always together
Leonard Sill had always been together with Beatrice Abrahams.
They had their picture taken holding hands in kindergarten. They went through grade school and then Chippewa Falls Senior High School together.
But when it came to college, Leonard headed to Madison and the University of Wisconsin while Beatrice attended the teaching school in Eau Claire.
Leonard Sill joined the Army Air Corps, the forerunner of today’s Air Force. He successfully went through flight school. But he wouldn’t go on without Beatrice. Erickson said the couple married in 1941.
Then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, America’s introduction into World War II.
Leonard became a senior pilot, assigned to an air strip in Okinawa, Japan. One day he was assigned to take up many military officials in a test flight of a new plane.
Bud Erickson said three engines on the plane went out of commission at 1,000 feet.
Leonard Sill’s fate was sealed. But not before his final brave act.
“He was able to pull the plane away from a populated area of servicemen,” Erickson said.
Talking in Navajo
After her husband’s death, Beatrice Abrahams Sill moved to Duluth, Minn., to teach.
Bud Erickson was still in the Pacific, serving in the Second Marine Division. He had enlisted on Dec. 18, 1941, a scant week after Pearl Harbor.
He was shipped to New Zealand, and then Guadalcanal. His job was in communications, working with the famed Navajo Code Talkers. They would relay orders in the Navajo language in a code the Japanese could never crack.
For example, the code talkers would call the country Australia as cha-yes-desi. The English translation is rolled hat, an Aussie trademark.
Erickson remembers having to bail a couple of code talkers out of the brig in Wellington, New Zealand.
He had to go to Wellington in January 1943 after shriveling down to 90 pounds. He wound up in a San Diego hospital, recovered and was shipped to Saipan, Okinawa and then back to Saipan.
After the war’s end, Erickson was sent to a communications office in Nagasaki, Japan, just weeks after the second U.S. nuclear blast leveled the city on Aug. 9, 1945, that led to the Japanese surrender.
“We all thought we’d be sterile” from the residual radiation, he said. “It didn’t work out that way. Bea and I had three daughters.”
But first he had to meet Beatrice.
Dinner for $1.10
Rosalie Kravich of Eleva had an intriguing suggestion for the Marine who was just back from the war.
“I used to play bridge with her and she said, ‘Bud, I’ve got a girl I want you to meet.’”
Beatrice took a train from Duluth to Minneapolis and met Erickson there. The couple went to the Nicollet Hotel where you could get a steak dinner and a night of dancing for $1.10, Erickson recalls.
They were married on Oct. 12, 1947, and honeymooned in White Bear Lake, Minn. They would go on to buy a house in another Twin Cities suburb, St. Louis Park, for the grand sum of $11,000.
A ranger friend of Beatrice’s gave the couple two dozen Colorado blue spruce seedlings. Erickson planted eight of them on the couple’s property.
“Those Colorado spruce are now about 40 feet high,” he said.
The couple moved to Visalia, Calif., about 190 miles north of Los Angeles, in 1952. Erickson worked for Nash Finch, a giant wholesaler.
Many years later, in 1979, the couple took a trip to New Orleans. There, Beatrice had some pain and was forced to return home.
She died on July 21, 1979.
Memories found
After Beatrice died, Bud Erickson went through boxes of her belongings. He found the photo of her and Leonard Sill holding hands in kindergarten and other items.
He was able to track down one of Leonard’s sisters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and sent the items to her.
Years rolled on. Leonard’s sisters died.
Bud fell in love again and married his wife, Joan. Together they have six adult children and 14 grandchildren.
In 1990, Bud wanted to show his three daughters the city where Beatrice had started her life. So they went to Chippewa Falls and visited the house where Beatrice grew up. They stopped at the house and chatted with the current owner.
Bud took his daughters to Lake Wissota, where Beatrice’s parents once had a cabin.
Then, a couple of years ago, Bud made his discovery of Leonard’s memorial flag. And he knew he had to do something.
Avenue of Flags
The city where Bud Erickson lives annually honors deceased veterans with an impressive ceremony called the Avenue of Flags.
Plans were for this year, the 20th year of the event, to display 1,580 flags of deceased American veterans at the Visalia Cemetery on Memorial Day, May 26.
Bud Erickson asked the event organizers if they would fly the flag of Leonard Sill, a man with no California connection but an American veteran from Chippewa Falls, Wis.
They said yes.
Leonard Sill’s flag became the 1,524th scheduled to be flown.
But Mother Nature had other plans. On Memorial Day, it was raining in Visalia, which is between Fresno and Bakersfield. And the veterans’ flags could not be flown in their memory.
“For those of you that weren’t able to understand why these flags could not be placed in the cemetery as planned, these flags that are casket flags, donated by families of deceased veterans, are made of a material that absorbs water, not sheds it,” wrote William F. Shererer Sr. to the Visalia Times-Delta newspaper on June 16.
“Not too many years ago, all the flags were pretty much soaked because of an unexpected rain and several thousands of dollars were spent in drying them out. Had this not been done, mold and rot would have undoubtedly destroyed all these flags.”
Still, Bud Erickson got his wish.
Leonard Sill’s memory was honored in the same cemetery where Beatrice is buried.
The kids from Chippewa Falls who held hands in kindergarten were reunited.
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