WILBERT SCHEFFLER

Original publish date:

March-April 2017

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Where is he now?

The Good Life featured Army Corporal Wilbert Scheffler as the Local Hero in the March-April 2017 magazine issue.

Throughout the last three years, Scheffler has been busy working through his personal home library of books, continuing to eat blueberries for good measure, and celebrating his 90th birthday. For Scheffler, the highlight of the party was celebrating with nearly 100 of his friends and family. Local accordion player Albert Mikesh, whom Scheffler considers a personal hero, played music at the party including Scheffler’s favorite waltz.

WILBERT SCHEFFLER

WRITTEN BY: BRITTNEY GOODMAN PHOTOS BY: URBAN TOAD MEDIA

87-year-old Barnesville native, Corporal Wilbert Scheffler of the US Army 7th Infantry during the Korean War, is a local hero worth getting to know. This reflective and grateful farmer and television repairman’s life was greatly influenced by his time in service in Korea.

Wilbert is the recipient of many honors for his time in service, including the Bronze Star, Korean Service Medal, Good Conduct Medal, United Nations Service Medal, Combat Infantry Badge and the National Defense Service Medal.

He entered Basic Training in 1952 at Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky. Wilbert described his fellow soldiers as “all farm kids, all the same people like I am.” After basic training, Wilbert said that where the soldier was assigned was “alphabetical”: “If your last name began near the beginning, you went to Germany. Mine was later, so I went to Korea. That’s that.”

During his time in Korea, one of his duties was guarding a prisoner of war camp. Wilbert explained, “We spent two years guarding prisoners. Years later we learned it was a leper colony.” He did not end up with leprosy. Wilbert was also struck by the poverty of the Korean people, especially the children: “What really got me over there were those little orphan kids — they were starving. How they survived I don’t know. Many soldiers threw crackers to them and they fought over them.”

He recalled one time early in the time in Korea: “I was so lucky … I was on the north side of Arsenal Hill – I moved out in the open so that I could see and I no more than moved and a mortar round came. I was buried under the rubble and dirt and I was protected. I was on guard duty all by myself. I was all alone and it was a bad place. But I was protected.”

Wilbert was dismayed by the lack of attention paid to the veterans coming back from the Korean War. With emotion, he said, “When I came back from Korea, nobody gave a darn.” But something happened in October 2016 that brought tears of joy to his eyes – he was one of the

veterans selected to travel to Washington DC on the WDAY Honor Flight. Wilbert exclaimed, “The Honor Flight was like living in another world! People were so nice. And after the flight, returning home, seeing all those people at the airport when we came back, it got to me.”

During the Honor Flight, Wilbert met many people and saw much. He described being kindly wheeled around in his wheelchair by Mike McFeely who took him to the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial. Wilbert enjoyed his time with Tracy Briggs, Forum Communications and founder of the Honor Flight back in 2007: “We got along really well. I could say anything to her and she understood. She wheeled me to the Vietnam Wall, the Korean War monument, and the Lincoln Monument.” Wilbert then got up to get something from another room and returned to proudly show me the thank you note he received from Briggs, smiled, and said: “She’s a nice lady.”

When I asked Wilbert about the movie “Pork Chop Hill” he said, “It was a good movie. Gregory Peck is very good in it. But nothing can accurately show what we went through.”

Wilbert says that circumstances and people saved his life while in Korea. Wilbert asserted, “Other people stepped in and saved me. I didn’t ask for any favors.”

One of those that stepped in was his best friend at war, Jim Cunningham, who assigned Wilbert to the Commo (Communications) Unit because of his knowledge of working with radios and other devices. Wilbert always had a radio: “I

kept the radio going, guys loved the music. It helped us all. I carried the radio on my backpack. I made a case big enough for six flashlight batteries and made it go 24 hours a day so that the guys had music. Music was just a lifesaver.”

One time Wilbert left his radio at the prison camp he was guarding. When he got back to his unit, it was gone, and he figured it was lost forever. Then Jim

Cunningham said, “Did you know they shipped your radio, it’s in supply?” Wilbert explained, “Getting that radio back was a lifesaver for me. It was a Zenith. It was high quality.”

Another person whose intervention perhaps saved Wilbert’s life was the officer who decided to send him to the rear of the line during the Pork Chop

Hill battle. Wilbert emotionally explained, "My best friend in the Army, Jim Cunningham, died on that hill. Somebody was looking out for me."

He described the battle: “The last battle – out of the clear blue sky – I had about 40 points and I was supposed to go home. The guys with that many points went back in the rear. The Chinese hit Pork Chop and they were bound to take it, they just swarmed into battle. And then, us guys in the rear, we heard that we were going to counter-attack. They lined us up. So many guys were so afraid, they just collapsed. They did not even have enough officers to make a company. We went to Hill 200, and they had decided to abandon Pork Chop.”

And finally, there was a doctor at the M.A.S.H unit where he was recovering from a very bad fever. Wilbert remembered that the doctor asserted, “Stay another day. It’s really bad out there.” Wilbert thinks his chances of survival were greatly increased by that kind doctor: “My company went into it. It was really bad, but I stayed another day or two, and was saved.” He asked, “Why did a doctor go out of his way to say ‘stay another day?’ He was kind of like Alan Alda from M.A.S.H., a young guy. I don’t know his name. I think he saved my life.”

Coming back from the war, he lived his life as a farmer and a television repairman on the side: “Back in the stone age, I fixed everyone’s television.”

Wilbert misses Jim Cunningham and communicates with a relative of Jim’s via email and letters. After the war, he became friends with fellow veteran, Dick Mosca, who was an officer in the Navy and a Minnesota highway patrolman who died a week before the October 2016 WDAY Honor Flight: “He accepted me for what I was. We would go to veteran’s funerals together. I really miss him.” A major reason Wilbert went on the Honor Flight was to honor Dick.

Wilbert has been married to Mary Ann since 1976. They have two children. Their son, Bill, works in the IT department at MSUM and who Wilbert encouraged with computers. His daughter, Peggy, lives in Carrington. She has given him two grandchildren. Evidence of his pride in his children and grandchildren are in the many photos in their Barnesville home. Mary Ann and Wilbert are active in the Barnesville VFW chapter, where he is a Quartermaster.

Wilbert’s son, Bill said this of his dad: “I think the war affected him in some pretty profound ways. He values all life and living and, consequently, none of our family members are hunters, which is unusual for this area. He often feels guilty eating meat. We grew up on a farm with pet cats, dogs, a pet chicken that lived in the house for a while, even a pet calf that roamed our farm yard at one point that he had to bottle feed to keep alive. He values home and hearth above all else and was never much for travel or similar excitement that most people crave after

he returned home. I don’t think any of us who weren’t there with him can ever fully understand what he saw and what he went through… As a listener to his stories, it is hard to process it all, I couldn’t imagine living through and surviving it. All he wanted was to be home and ever since he returned home, it’s where he wants to be and where he is happiest - surrounded by everyone and everything he values most.”

Bill continued: “We did not have a lot growing up but he’d still go the extra mile for friends and people in the local community by helping them with their TVs and electronics much like he did maintaining radio for friends back in Korea. Without realizing it at the time, I followed in his footsteps by continuing the tradition and helping people in my community with computers and still do even today in my free time.”

Bill credits Wilbert for his career in computing after his dad brought a very early Apple II Plus computer home one day for Bill: “I hooked it to one of the many televisions in my bedroom (one of the perks of having a dad who fixed TVs!) and it was love at first sight for me when I realized I could program it to do whatever I wanted.”

When asked about how he keeps all of these memories clear, Wilbert said, “I eat a lot of blueberries. It keeps your mind sharp.” He is proud that the only pill he takes is for high blood pressure.

When asked what he considered “the good life,” Wilbert thought a bit and said, “I don’t know ... After I got back from the war and I owned a farm and I was helping people with their machinery and television... That to me was a good life. All that I went through in the war and I was not wounded and I am alive. That is a good life.” •