Home Front: John Willman

“He worked at Allis-Chalmers in West Allis, but he didn’t work on tractors. He was a brazier, which is a fancy welder, and he worked on Nike and Titan missile systems,” John recalled.
“There were five of us Willman children, and then there were five more steps that got added on.”

By the time John enlisted in military service, both of his parents had passed away.
“I was living with a stepmother. She was all for it. And I wanted to get out and go and do something, so I joined the Navy Reserves in high school. So I went to the senior prom with a girl on the court with a boot camp haircut,” he explained.

“At the time—1963— Vietnam was just getting started to heat up. And my whole family is military, and our family shield actually goes back to the Crusades, where the German Teutonic Knights were fighting for Jerusalem and Christianity, and it’s on our family shield. It was just my turn.

“I wanted to get out and see the world. My dad had been in the Navy in World War II, my grandpa in the Army in World War I.

“I wanted the Navy. In Milwaukee, in one of the poorer neighborhoods I grew up in, was a poster for taking the Pere Marquette car ferry across Lake Michigan. So as a kid, I’m standing there like this, saying, “For $4.95, I could leave this.” You know, across the big lake. It sort of stuck.

“I joined the Reserves first, and then I was immediately put on active. So, altogether, I served six years. I’ve been on four oceans and 20 seas. I’ve been across the Arctic Circle; I’ve been across the Equator; I’ve been around the world. Because I wanted to see something, and the Navy made sure I did.”

Willman said he had his “first eye-opening of what the world was going to be like” when they lost four crew members.

“So one of my jobs on the ship, my buddy and I built a radio system… and we strung an aerial from the top of the aircraft carrier to the tail, and we could pick up around the world,” he said.

“And that night, when we got it working, the word spread that we could make calls back to America. 3,500 guys were in lines up and down all of the ladders.

“We didn’t know how to handle it. And all of a sudden, there’s a big commotion outside this little tiny shop, which we’d just sort of absconded with, you know? And there’s an officer out there, 6’3” - 6’4,” blond, long hair—you knew right away he was a pilot. ‘I’m Lieutenant So-and-so, and I’m at the front of this line,’ he said.

“I closed the door a little bit, and I said to Woody, the other guy that helped me, I said, ‘Woody, we got a situation.’ He says, ‘What are you going to do?’ I says, ‘Well, it’s not fair. I don’t care who this guy is, you know? Some of these guys have been waiting an hour.’ You know, or two.

“I stick my head out to straighten out this pilot, and he’s yelling at me, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And there’s this voice about two decks up: ‘I know who you are, and I am waiting in line for my turn. And I am the ship’s executive officer, and you will now wait at the back of the line.’”

John said that they were never given time off for their regular jobs.

“We had to be up sometimes 48 hours straight for ship defense and offense. And it got to be so exhausting, we had to kind of shut that down,” he added.

Willman said that he struggled when he returned from serving.

“I always had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. And when I got back and the treatment was as horrible as it was, I had to quit the veteran groups that I had joined immediately on getting back because it seemed like nobody was on our side. And I didn’t recognize the country. I didn’t like what was being thrown in my face. So I quit everything,” he explained.

“But I got so depressed that I actually spent some time at the VA because I had to. And you won’t believe this, but you can get so depressed that your vision collapses, all black. And it kept getting smaller and smaller.”

One day after returning from service, Willman started a job at General Electric, testing X-ray equipment.

“Later on in life, I thought that computers might be a better way to go. So I ended up with an associates and then a bachelors from the University of Wisconsin in chemistry and zoology.

“And after a while, I started seeing that I wasn’t getting anywhere with the chemistry and the zoology, so I went into Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, and I got degrees in coding mainframe computers.

“I did so well that I went back for other — as I saw PCs coming in — for those languages that the mid-sized companies would use. So I went in, and I learned all the new languages for that to program, and did so well they invited me to be an instructor. I taught computer courses for about seven years.

A special thank you to Joren Anderson and the students at Auburndale High School for their work collecting these interviews with area veterans.