World War II veteran Joe Turicik speaks to local students

By Bob Petrie
Sheboygan Press staff

In 1944 at Fort Sheridan, Ill., Joe Turicik had just passed his military physical when the doctor told him that he'd make a good Navy man.

"And I had second thoughts," recalled Turicik, now 83 and living in Plymouth. "Being in the Navy, when it gets scary, you cannot dig a foxhole in the ocean."

So as Turicik waited to be processed, he decided to slide over to the line where Army enlistees were signing up, and became an Army man instead.

"Believe it or not," he said, "I dug many foxholes for protection."

During the last years of World War II, Turicik was shipped to the Pacific Theater with a field artillery unit, where he and his fellow troops fired 105 mm howitzer cannons in places such as New Guinea and the Philippines to help the infantry advance and clear out the enemy.

"Being a 19-year-old, I guess I had a lot of guts, and I don't know what I did, but I earned a Bronze Star," said Turicik, who will speak to students at St. John the Baptist Catholic School today in Plymouth as part of the school's Veterans Day activities.

St. John the Baptist will host one of many Veterans Day observations held during the day throughout Sheboygan County, with others being held in places such as Sheboygan, Howards Grove and Plymouth along with others.

Turicik, who then was part of a unit preparing for an amphibious invasion of Japan before the United States dropped the atomic bombs in 1945, leading to the unconditional surrender of the Japanese, left the service in 1946 and returned to Wisconsin. He went on to own Sentry food stores first in West Allis, and then starting in 1981, in Plymouth.

Turicik ran the Plymouth store for nearly 20 years before retiring in 1998 and turning the business over to his son, Tom, who continued for a few years before the store was sold to a corporate owner.

But Joe Turicik never forgot his military roots. Last Saturday, he was part of a group of 80 veterans from Wisconsin who traveled to Washington, D.C. on an Honor Flight for a whirlwind, one-day tour of the many military memorials in the nation's capital. He got to meet former Sens. Robert Dole and his wife, Elizabeth.

"We had a fantastic time," Turicik said of the trip. "We saw so many things. And we were treated royally. I don't know, I felt like a general being treated with the red carpet service."

On the flight back to Milwaukee, Turicik was greeted with a "mail call," packets of well wishes from students at St. John the Baptist. "That was great, and I read them all."

Today, he hopes to pass along a bit of his personal history to the students.

"What I want to do is reveal my Army life, military life, and then I would like to talk about my trip I had to D.C.," Turicik said.

Turicik's wife of 35 years, Zita, wasn't able to go on the Honor Flight, but was in Milwaukee when her husband returned. A large contingent of the couple's children had a banner made up to welcome Joe back. The two, both widowers, were married in 1974. Each had four children when they were married, and they had two children of their own for a total of 10.

"It was wonderful and the people were so inspired," said Zita Turicik, who is 78 and "pretty proud" of her husband.

Joe Turicik, noting that the flags were all at half-mast in Washington to mark the tragedy of the Fort Hood shootings last week, wants people to make sure that Veterans Day is a day that's important to the country.

"I hope so," he said. "It's important to me and I'm sure a lot of other people also."

Reach Bob Petrie at bpetrie@sheboygan-press.com and 453-5129.