Home Front: Bill Hembrook

MARSHFIELD – Bill Hembrook was born in Fond du Lac, the son of Clarence and Mary Hembrook.

“And my father was an engineer at the Waukesha Motor Works — he worked on gas turbine engines. My mother was a secretary at several different places,” Bill stated.

“I had one adopted sister. She’s nine years younger than me. And she married a doctor, so she did all right.

Bill was in college at Stevens Point when he was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War.

“I was going to be a junior in college, and my county — Waukesha County at that time; we had moved from Fond du Lac to Waukesha, that’s where I graduated from high school — and my county ran out of people, draft-eligible people. And so they took all the college guys and put them in a hat. And they drew 10 for October, 10 for November and 10 for December, because they were short guys. The only lottery I ever won — I got picked,” he recalled.

“I was going to go into the Marines or the Army through the draft, but I joined the Air Force in between because my dad had been in the Marines in World War II, and he said, ‘You’re too big a target for running around in the jungle, so you better get into something where you don’t carry a gun in the brush.’ So that’s how I got in the Air Force.

“My first assignment in Southeast Asia was Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. And from there I went to Kadena, Okinawa, for not long. And then I went to Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, which is the closest air base to Hanoi — and that was the capital of the North Vietnamese. And then I was transferred to U-Tapao from there in Thailand. And then after I got done with Southeast Asia, my last three months before I got out, I was at Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas.

“And I didn’t spend that much time in Vietnam.”

Hembrook served in the Air Force in Southeast Asia from June 1967 to August 1970, and when he returned, everything had changed.

“When I first was in college, I was in natural resources, and I wanted to be in fish biology, fish hatchery. And well, when I got back, my advisor, who was in natural resources/fish biology, said, ‘Bill, there’s no jobs in Wisconsin in the next 10 years.’ You see, when I was gone, all these kids went to college and took up the job I wanted,” he said.

“So then, I had to change my major, and I went into education. So I became a teacher and a coach. That’s how I got here. I was athletic director for 25 years, baseball coach for 25 years and teacher for 25 years here. And my wife taught for 35 years here at Auburndale.
“In 1966, I was 20 when I went in, and I served for four years, so I was 24 when I got out — when I went back to college.

“I was unhappy about losing two years of eligibility, playing football and playing baseball at Point. Because when I went in, I still had two years left. Well, I came under the old rule, and the old rule was you lost your eligibility after four years when you started in 1964. So in 1968, I was done. I couldn’t play. Well, I never got back to college until ‘70.

“Well, one of the things another vet and I did was push to get that rule change — that kids coming back out of the service could play their eligibility that they lost; they could still play college. So that was one good thing that I did.”

Hembrook said that veterans are appreciated “more now than we used to. I have a lot of people come up and thank me for the service and that,” he added.

“When I first got back to Point to go to school, a friend of mine who also had been in the military was head of the 550s — and that was the Veterans Association in college. They were going to have an interview or a debate between a professor from Canada who had dodged the draft by going to Canada. So, he was going to be on one side, and me and this other guy were going to be on the other side.

“Well, you’ve got to remember, Vietnam at this time is very unpopular. I mean, we were ‘baby killers’—that’s what they called us. And so we’re having this debate. This professor from Canada walks up, he gets a standing ovation. Pat O’Donnell and me, we walk up — we’re the two veterans — we got booed.”

Hembrook said that impacted him.

“I realized how bad this country hated us,” he said.