Lloyd Mickelson is proud to be a Veteran

Awhile back, in the Oklee Herald Early Files there was an item stating that Lloyd Mickelson had gotten out, but the dates did not correctly explain why and when he received his discharge.

The Oklee Herald got a call and we did a little research on the Early Files and found that a sentence had been removed to make room and thus the confusion. Lloyd Mickelson said he had mailed copies of his service years and after a conversation with Lloyd, I asked if it was ok to use this information for a Veteran’s Day article. Thank you Lloyd for your service.

Lloyd Mickelson is from the Oklee area. He attended school in Oklee and had just finished his sophomore year when he decided to enlist in the Navy on VE Day (Victory in Europe) on May, 8, 1945. He was a youthful 17 year old who along with a group of his friends decided to enlist at the same time.

He was sent to the Great Lakes, IL Navy Training Base where he spent nine weeks in Boot Camp. Training with many types of firearms (rifles, 502 caliber machine guns, 20 millimeter cannons & 40 millimeter anti-aircraft cannons. He learned how to spot enemy ships and aircrafts and how to fight fires. Hand-to-hand combat and amphibious landing craft training was also important lessons since there were plans for to invade Japan. Much to his relief, the training wasn’t used as the war came to an immediate halt because the war ended on August 6th, 1945 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

After the boot camp training and the end of the war, Lloyd was sent to California on a troop train, transferred to a troop ship which took almost a month to get to Guam. He stayed there while he waited for his orders to be transferred to the tiny Island of Peleliu, where American soldiers had been in battle for 45 bloody days to control the airfield on Peleliu.

While stationed on Peleliu as part of the Navy Air Base Crash Crew, they slept in tents. The climate was tropical with temperatures averaging between 90 and 112 degrees and lots of rainfall that included a brief shower every day (the averages yearly rainfall is 145 inches a year).

One of the duties of the Crash Crew was to refuel the aircraft and they were lucky enough to occasionally ride in some of the aircraft. He remembers flying on a B-24 Privateer which was used for weather reconnaissance. He commented that the plane is similar to the B-24 Liberator, but the fuselage was longer to accommodate the flight engineer’s station. The plane had a tall single vertical stabilizer rather instead of the B-24’s twin tail.

Lloyd served on Peleliu for five months, then was sent on a troop ship to San Francisco. The ship stopped at the Kwajalein Naval Station Missile Defense Test Site where atomic weapons and ballistic missiles were tested. 167 workers who had been building the test site were picked up. Once back in San Francisco, Lloyd took a troop train to Minneapolis to be Honorably Discharged on the 17th day of July in 1946.

Lloyd came home the summer of 1946 but jobs were scarce, so he and a friend, Harold Cyr decided to go to Seattle. They were hoping to land a job with the Merchant Marine Shipping Company who was known for paying high wages. They hitch-hiked their way to the Coast and stayed with relatives. However, once there, they found out the company was on strike. After two weeks of searching for jobs, they headed back home. 

After being discharged, Lloyd lived with his parents, Herb & Emma Mickelson in Oklee so he returned there after Harold and his trip to Seattle and instead finished high school. He completed his Junior year in Oklee and then attended Moorhead College and tested for his High School diploma. 

In 1948 his parents decided to move to Ridgeland, Wisconsin to operate a café and hotel, so he moved to be with them. He worked on road construction for a time, and eventually got a job in a grocery store in while attending Rice Lake Technical College for store management.

He met Jeanette Hinzeman and they were married on July 1, 1951. They had four children, Cynthia, Laurie, Todd and Corey. 

Also in 1951 he was hired by the Ridgeland Farmers Union Co-op. The Co-op went to a full service hardware store and major farm supply. He was employed there for 55 years.

Lloyd was busy in the Ridgeland community serving in the Fire Department for forty years (fire chief for 35 years), active on the Fair Board and the Ridgeland American Legion where he served as Vice Commander. Lloyd also was on call in the Reserve for eight years and received his Honorable Discharge from the Navy in July 1954. 

(This information came from Lloyd Mickelson and the Hay River Review August 2013 edition)