Correspondent photo / Thomas Welsh ... William “Bill” Blascak, of Austintown, shows off mementos of his military service, which spanned from Jan. 29, 1952, to Jan. 29, 1954. He was in the Army during the Korean War.

AUSTINTOWN — Although Bill Blascak was discharged from the U.S. Army in 1954, his approach to every challenge since then has reflected the discipline and confidence he attained there.

Drafted into military service at the height of the Korean War, Blascak experienced fierce combat training that pushed him beyond his personal boundaries and contributed — albeit indirectly — to a career in education that spanned 32 years.

“I’m still ‘military,'” the 92-year-old veteran observed. “You can see it in everything I’ve ever done, from running a school district to taking my eyedrops every morning.”

Born in Girard in 1931, Blascak grew up in the shadow of World War II. His parents, Joseph and Katherine Gosick Blascak, were personally touched by the war. He recalled that his mother’s sister, Stella Sekula, had three stars posted on her front window, as two of her sons served in the Pacific Theater, while a third fought in Europe.

Blascak also knew that another relative had lost his life during the Battle of the Bulge.

“Being aware of those sacrifices has an impact on you,” he said.

Nevertheless, when he was drafted into military service in January 1952, Blascak — then a 21-year-old truck driver for a local coal company — anticipated an adventure.

“I took a bus from Warren to Canton,” he explained. “I was with a bunch of guys from Trumbull County, and we were practically celebrating.”

LESSON LEARNED

What happened next fueled one of the many lessons he learned during his military service. When he arrived for processing at Fort Meade, Maryland, Blascak was separated from his newfound friends and sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for training as a combat engineer.

Upon his arrival in Missouri, he tossed his duffle bag on his bunk and envisioned a night of sleep. Instead, he was handed a rifle and assigned guard duty.

“I walked my post a mile a minute, with a rusty M1 with nothin’ in it,” Blascak said, repeating a ditty then popular in military circles.

As he stumbled through the darkness, Blascak heard a familiar tune coming from the army base’s PX — a tune that reminded him of home.

“I could hear Kay Starr singing, ‘Wheel of Fortune, come spinning my way,’ and the tears just flowed down my face,” he recalled. “I understood that this was for real. I was going to be all alone until I came back — that is, if I came back.”

Blascak described the experience as the moment he “became a man.”

“From that time on, I was determined to be the best soldier the Army ever had,” he said. Indeed, he completed his infantry school training with 100 percent proficiency, one of seven members of his battalion to do so.

While training as a combat engineer, Blascak learned to build and destroy Bailey bridges — portable, prefabricated, truss bridges sturdy enough to support tanks and other military vehicles.

“If you didn’t want the enemy to use them after your own vehicles passed, you’d blow them up,” he explained. “I was trained to use C3 putty, nitrostarch, dynamite and blasting caps.”

On the rifle range, he distinguished himself as a marksman and later became proficient in the use of an M1919 Browning 30-caliber machine gun, a 50-caliber machine gun and a 3.5-inch rocket launcher, which required a two-man team to operate.

“I could hit a tank up to 1,000 yards,” Blascak noted.

Involved in frequent simulated combat, he indicated that night maneuvers were especially intense.

“You would set up a perimeter with a fence, and they would shoot tracer shells over your head,” he said. “After the flash of the weapon, you would count until you heard the bullet go over your head, and that gave you an approximate range to lay down a base of fire. If you counted to four, you knew the shells were being fired about 400 yards away.”

Equally daunting were training exercises in which Blascak and his peers crawled in the direction of live machine gun fire.

“There was a screen overhead because it stopped you from jumping up, in which case you would’ve been killed,” he noted. “They had small explosions going off on either side of you to create the impression of bombs dropping or shells exploding.”

PARACHUTE TRAINING

After graduating from infantry school, Blascak volunteered for parachute training at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he weathered the intense heat of July and August.

“For the first week, we did parachute landing falls and lots of running,” he said. “Every hour, you’d get a 10-minute break, fall out of formation, and they had water shooting out of hoses for about 50 yards…. You’d be soaking wet, but by the time your break was over, you’d be as dry as a bone.”

During his second week, Blascak made a series of jumps from a 250-foot parachute tower, which enabled him to practice his landing technique.

“You could see Columbus, Georgia, from the top of that thing,” he recalled.

Blascak’s third week ended with five successful jumps from an aircraft, which enabled him to earn his wings. At that point, the young soldier and members of his class boarded a train to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where they were met by a provost marshal who informed several of them that they would undergo military police training.

As a military officer in the 11th Airborne Division Police Company, Blascak was assigned duties in Clarksville, Tennessee; Hopkinsville, Kentucky; and Nashville, Tennessee. In early November 1952, Blascak and other members of the 503rd Airborne Regimental Combat Team of the 11th Airborne Division were flown from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to the U.S. territory of Alaska for a massive Army-Air Force arctic maneuver.

The maneuver, known as “Exercise Warm Wind,” was designed to familiarize soldiers and airmen with techniques of survival in the extreme cold they could expect on the Korean Peninsula.

“The story was that we were going to Korea to replace the 187th Infantry Regiment,” Blascak stated. “By the fall of 1952, though, they were already negotiating a truce — something we knew nothing about.”

Members of the 503rd Regimental Combat Team marked Thanksgiving with dinner at Fort Richardson. Afterward, about 40 members of his team engaged in another simulated combat in which they “captured” Ellison Air Force Base in Fairbanks. From there, the group traveled from Fort Ellison to Fort Elmendorf, where they boarded a plane bound for Fort Campbell.

Although Blascak believed he was a highly competent military police officer, he was ambivalent about returning to Fort Campbell.

“My heroes when I entered the military were ‘Jumpin’ Jim’ Gavin and Gen. George Patton,” he stressed. “I wanted to be challenged in combat.”

He immediately requested a transfer back to the 503rd Regimental Combat Team, in the hope that he would soon participate in the war. The provost marshal at the base denied his request, however. The Korean War eventually ended with an armistice signed July 27, 1953.

TEACHING CAREER

Blascak was released from active duty on Jan. 29, 1954, and assigned to eight years in the military reserves. Upon returning to Ohio, he visited Youngstown College (now Youngstown State University) and met with the school’s athletic director, who recruited him for the football team.

The veteran became a full-time student with a partial football scholarship, while the GI Bill covered his books. As it turned out, however, the athletic department had enrolled him in health and first aid classes, which he found unchallenging.

During a chance encounter with biology professor Dr. Charles Evans, Blascak was inspired to shift his focus to chemistry and biology. Two years later, he became Dr. Evans’ lab assistant.

Around that time, the former soldier caught a glimpse of Patricia Higgins, a recent graduate of Ursuline High School, as the two passed each other on campus. Blascak, who missed the excitement of jumping out of planes, was notorious for pulling “stunts” on his motorcycle. Despite hushed warnings from several friends, the young woman began to date him, and they were married in 1958.

Blascak’s subsequent career as an educator took him from the Youngstown City Schools to the Trumbull County, where he served on the county board of education, acted as an interim superintendent, and worked as assistant principal at Girard High School. He spent three years as superintendent of the Southington Local School District and devoted a similar period to teaching and serving as housing director at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna.

Between 1976 and 2000, Blascak taught biology at Youngstown State University as a limited-service faculty member. He pointed out that he was part of a “team” of educators, given that his wife, Patricia, after raising four children, went back to school and taught for more than 20 years at Mineral Ridge’s Seaborn Elementary School.

Over time, Blascak has remained loyal to his oath as a veteran. When he was almost 80 years old, he was one of scores of former veterans who met with Mahoning County Sheriff Randall Wellington after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to volunteer as a deputy sheriff.

Blascak said that the “can-do” attitude he absorbed in the military has helped him negotiate the myriad challenges related to aging.

“I have glaucoma, and I have no problem putting drops in my eyes three times a day,” he stated. “I take pills because I’m prediabetic, and I’m on my third pacemaker. I do whatever I need to do to keep moving forward.”

To suggest a veteran for this series, which runs weekly through Veterans Day, email Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.