Bill Mancke was 17 the first time he and some friends ditched school to join the Marines.
“They didn’t accept us,” said Mancke, who was born in Blue Island and grew up in Tinley Park.
So he and his Thornton Township High School classmates skipped classes on two more occasions, hoping to convince U.S. military recruiters to send them to the front.
The third time proved to be the charm. Sort of.
The teens were allowed to enlist but were sent back to school.
After graduation, on Mancke’s 18th birthday, he received orders to report to a processing center on Taylor Street in Chicago.
“When I got there, they said, ‘Gentlemen, we’re shipping out today,’” he recalled.
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The train from Chicago to Tinley Park wasn’t that reliable at the time and Mancke said he had no way to get home to pack or say goodbye to his parents.
“So I got on the phone and told my mother, ‘Guess what, I’m heading for California. I’m in the Marine Corps.’” he recalled.
It was November, 1943.
It would be May, 1945 before he would return home and his mother would get to see him in uniform, by then decorated with three purple hearts.
Mancke, who survived three injuries in the Pacific theater and later received two presidential citations, will be honored during the Chicagoland Speedway’s NASCAR Stars & Stripes Weekend, which is Thursday through Sunday.
“We’re very proud to have Bill (Mancke) connected to the weekend. His resume of service to our country is remarkable. And to be able to tie him into a platform as big as our weekend and to have him to help us honor our service men and women is just a true privilege for us,” said Scott Paddock, president of the Chicagoland Speedway.
Mancke, who now lives in Manhattan, will be on stage for pre-race opening ceremonies, accompanied by several of the Tinley Park American Legion Riders.
He will acknowledged during the Honor Ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, the same day the track is hosting Gold Star families and listing the names of Illinois soldiers killed in action on the big screen. At 2:30 p.m., Mancke also will be recognized at the track.
The 92-year-old said he’s honored to be included in the Stars & Stripes Weekend.
On a recent Monday morning, Mancke retold the story of his military service and how he came to be a founding member of the Tinley Park VFW post.
Less than three months after he set off for boot camp in San Diego, Mancke said he was storming a beach on Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands.
“I got too near a block house that blew up. It had an ammo dump underneath it,” he said. “Nothing broke but I was bruised up and had shrapnel in my right knee and left ankle.”
He was patched up at a military hospital on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands and sent back to the front.
In 13 months, he said, the Fighting 4th Marine Division landed on four islands.
“We went through the whole Pacific from Roi-Namur to the Mariana Islands,” he said.
Mancke also sustained injuries on Saipan and Iwo Jima.
“I made it 14 days on Iwo Jima” before a shrapnel injury led to his evacuation, he said.
Almost two years to the day he shipped out, Mancke was discharged.
After the service, Mancke enrolled in an architectural engineering program at the former Chicago Tech but quickly ran out of funds and dropped out.
Over the years he worked as a bartender at Sanger Hall in Tinley Park, ran a gas station, owned a trucking company and sold cars.
In 1954, he built the alley that is now Tinley Park Bowl, 7601 183rd St. In 1962, he sold the business.
Eventually he worked at Mobile in Frankfort and retired from that company.
In 1945, Mancke said he was the only World War II vet to help organize the Bremen Township Veterans Club. Together he and the other World War I veterans convinced an Orland Park bank to lend them the money to open the Tinley Park VFW Post 2791.
Mancke said he doesn’t attend many meetings anymore because he doesn’t like to drive after dark and his mobility is limited. “But I think I’m the longest member there, since 1945,” he said.
He also volunteers every Tuesday in the public information center at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood.
Mancke and his wife Nancy, a second marriage for both, have several children, grandchildren and great grandchildren between them.
In February, 2017, he and Nancy returned to Roi-Namur.
“A buddy of mine wanted his ashes scattered on the island because that’s where he was wounded the first time, too,” Mancke said. The family invited the Manckes to join them, expenses paid.
He said the return trip was emotional.
“I was curious to see what the island would look like” more than 70 years after the Marines stormed it, he said. “I was able to stand right where I was wounded practically.”
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The island, he said, “was beautiful. Seeing the people so happy made you feel like you did something worthwhile.”
Nancy Mancke said while there, the couple visited a school.
“They were seated on a stage and the children got to ask questions,” she said. Afterward, she said, the children hugged them and thanked them for their service.
“It was really sweet,” she said.
Mancke said a woman who was 7-years-old during the Japanese occupation visited the gathering and thanked the vets for liberating the island.
Americans, too, now express the same kind of curiosity and gratitude, Mancke said.
“It is probably within the last four or five years that we started receiving all this attention,” he said. “We’ve been out here all these years and nobody ever mentioned anything about our service. Now all of sudden, you walk down the street and people come up and congratulate you and thank you. Some 70 some years later.
“It’s different,” he said. “It’s nice.”
Whatever problems the country faces right now, he said, “We still need to remember that we’re very fortunate to be here and do what we do.”