Home Front: Tony Marohl

“I grew up on a small farm. Back then, it was not unusual. Eighty acres was about right. We had 20 head of cattle, and I grew up in a family with six boys and no girls. So being on a farm that made a whole lot of difference to have six boys running around and doing it. We never had a tractor until I was about six years old. We did not have a milking machine until I was a junior in high school,” Tony recalled.

“The oldest brother, Gordie, or Gordon, was in the Navy, and he passed away probably about 10 years ago. He spent most of his life in Rockford, Ill. He worked for the Chrysler plant down in that area for the majority of his life.

“Second in line was Walt, and he was a manager for Woolworth Stores… he spent a good portion of his life in Upper Michigan as manager of two or three or four different places where he organized up there. And then probably 20, 25 years ago he came back to the Stratford area. He became fire chief in Stratford for the volunteer fire department and did a lot of announcing for sports games. And then, he and his wife operated an assisted living facility in Stratford for about 10 or 15 years. And Walt died October of 2024.

“Third in line was Mel, and he and his wife operated the bakery in Athens, and he also worked for Wausau Steel on the construction line for many years. But mostly, he and his wife were at the bakery, and Mel died in February of 2025.

“Hank Jr. is still in Stratford, and he turned 80 a year or so ago. He worked mostly at the Stratford Feed Mill for a number of years as a driver and delivery person to a lot of local farms, and also works to help take care of the Catholic St. Joseph Cemetery in Stratford — both the maintenance and helping folks find locations for burial plots, things like that.
“And then I became the fifth one, and I have one younger brother, Willie, who worked for a number of years as a mailman in the Stratford area.”

All six of the Marohl boys spent time serving in the military.

“The oldest, Gordie, was in the Navy, worked as an electrician on a minesweeper. The other five of us were all in the Army,” he added.

While the majority of the brothers served during the Vietnam conflict, Willy was the only one to serve in Vietnam, for over one year.

After graduating from Stratford High School, Tony worked in a few jobs, including one at the old Norwood facility, which was located on the current Marshfield Scrap grounds.

“And at the time, they had over a hundred patients, chronic mentally ill usually, both male and female, and I worked on one of the units with a lot of the mentally ill patients, 25 of them on the unit,” Tony recalled.

At the time Tony was drafted, he was able to get a one-year deferment due to the position he was in at another facility.

“The draft board in effect said, ‘Yes, we will allow you to continue that job because the employer said it would have been difficult to find a replacement.’ But they said, ‘Next June, you are ours.’ And in June of the following year, 1970, I did have to go in. So, I was drafted, and whether I volunteered or drafted, I had no problem going,” he stated.

“So, I left behind a small community, obviously, the small family life and working on a farm.”

“Whoever was in charge at the time looked at about three or four people and said, ‘Marines, Marines, Marines.’ I think there were five of them that they picked out and said, ‘You’re going to be in the Marines,’” he recalled.

“And the rest of us were Army, and we got our first sample of what military life would be like because when the officer did that, he said, ‘You five just volunteered to be in the Marines.’ No, they didn’t volunteer to be in the Marines, but the military said, you volunteered, and yes, indeed, they went to the Marines, so real early I got, oh, this is the way it’s going to be.”

Marohl did his basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

“After I got out of basic training, I served the rest of my time — the last year and a half or more — in Fort Jackson, S.C., right in the heart of South Carolina… that’s where I served, that’s where I stayed. I was in an office. My job in the military was, they called it a clerk,” he explained.

Tony was discharged one day before his birthday.

“I also remember that there was a fellow from Madison who was being discharged on the same day, and so he and I made arrangements. He was going to drive from Columbia back at least as far as Madison, and if I wanted to get a ride, he said, ‘Bring your duffel bag, hop in, let’s go,’” Marohl recalled.

“I remember saying goodbye to the folks in the office because it was just a couple days after Christmas when I got out; and so Christmas break I said goodbye, and I hopped in the car with Steve, and we came back to Wisconsin.”

Tony got a ride to his brother’s place in Rockford, where he stayed for a couple of days before Gordie drove him back to Stratford.