OP_110719

6 | November 7, 2019 | the orland Park Prairie news
OPPrairiedaily.com
Service and honor: Orland Park veteran talks
Bill Jones, Editor
Inside a house that from
the outside looks much
like any other in the Brook
Hills subdivision is some
of the richest history Orland
Park has to offer. The
American flag raised on a
pole out front offers a hint
of the stories waiting to be
told.
“I always tell people
there’s a flag out front, and
if it’s still up, we haven’t
surrendered yet,” William
“Bill” Nicholson said with
a laugh.
Like many veterans,
Nicholson — a 95-year-old
who has lived in that Orland
Park home for the past
31 years with his wife of 71
years, Loretta — was not
always keen on telling the
stories of his involvement
in World War II.
“He didn’t talk much
about it,” his daughter Jan
Adamo said of when she
was a child. “He always
kept it more to himself.”
But Adamo said her father
has remained proud of
his service, and opened up
in recent years to his grandchildren
and others.
“Whenever he gets talking
now, everyone is mesmerized,”
Adamo said.
It is not hard to see why.
Nicholson, born and
raised in the Back of the
Yards, maneuvered his
way into flight training at
an early age, worked on
the Manhattan Project and
threw out a deferment he
received to end up part of
an Army Air Force crew
that dropped bombs over
Germany. And he can talk
for hours about any of these
topics, but it all goes back
to his love for engineering.
“This starts a story,” as
Nicholson put it. “And
I have to go back to my
childhood, because it starts
there.”
Taking flight
“I laughingly say I was
probably born to be an engineer,
with a slide rule in
my hand or something,”
Nicholson said. “I was always
fixing things — taking
things apart, putting
them back together. I mean,
when I was 6, 7 years old.
Making things work when
they didn’t work.”
He and Loretta were
schoolmates then, having
met in the first grade. But
before any of that came
Nicholson’s love of flight.
“I had a keen interest
in airplanes or aeronautics,
probably since I was
5 or 6,” Nicholson said.
“I remember being so impressed
with [Charles]
Lindbergh, and that was
1927 when he flew over to
Paris. I was born in 1924,
so I was 3 years old. I remember
every plane that
flew over, I’d be hollering,
‘Hey, Lindy!’ thinking he
was in the airplanes.”
Nicholson’s fascination
led him on trips to what is
now Chicago Midway International
Airport, where
at the time he could just
wander near the planes and
take photographs.
It was there that he met
Bernard DeWitt, the owner
of a now-defunct flying
field in Ashburn. DeWitt
gave Nicholson, at a time
when his family was struggling
with the Great Depression,
a job at the flight
training school.
Cars pulled into the
parking lot so people could
watch the planes. Nicholson’s
job was to sell them
12- to 15-minute flights for
$1.50. He got 10 percent,
which added up.
“I would make maybe $2
or $3 on weekends, which
was a lot of money,” Nicholson
said. “During the
week, there wasn’t much to
do, so I would be hanging
William “Bill” Nicholson,
of Orland Park, was
involved with the
Manhattan Project in the
Met Lab at University of
Chicago and flew B-24
Liberator bombers over
Germany during World
War II. Photos submitted
out with the pilots. I’d pull
the planes into the hanger,
out of the hanger, gas
’em up, wash them, grind
valves in the engines, fix
flats — do anything to be
around airplanes, listen to
the pilots talk. … I learned
a lot from them, just listening.”
One slow summer afternoon,
DeWitt invited Nicholson
up in a two-seater
that sat one behind the other,
with dual controls. Once
airborne, DeWitt asked him
a question.
“He turned around to me
and said, ‘You think you
can fly this?’” Nicholson
said.
Nicholson had no experience
inside of a cockpit,
but from ages 9-13 educated
himself the only way
he could, “reading and
devouring all the books I
could read on the famous
flyers of the time.”
“I said, ‘sure,’” Nicholson
recalled. “I was supremely
confident. It’s hard
to explain. I could visualize
myself when I was reading
these stories, how people
did this and did that, the
maneuvers.”
He kept the plane flying
in a straight line. DeWitt
took care of the landing and
asked Nicholson what else
he could do.
“I said I could do an outside
loop, an inside loop,
and I’d only read about
these things,” Nicholson
said. “He decided he is going
to teach me how to fly.”
For two years — during
the school year only
on weekends — Nicholson
learned how to take off and
land under DeWitt’s tutelage,
all before he entered
St. Rita High School, which
he chose for its aeronautical
engineering curriculum
and where he earned a preengineering
certificate.
“If my mother knew
it, she would have died,”
Nicholson said. “She never
knew I was off the ground,
and I wouldn’t tell her.
But I was thrilled to be out
there.”
Starting a chain reaction
When Nicholson graduated
from high school in
1942, he got a job at the
University of Chicago. As
far as anyone else knew, he
was working as a machinist.
In fact, he was working
on the “extremely secret”
Manhattan Project, “rubbing
elbows” with “the
greatest minds of the 20th
century.”
While the west stands of
Stagg Field are famous because
that is where the Pile
was built and the first repeatable
chain reaction was
achieved, Nicholson was
under the north stands. In
small laboratories known
as the Met Lab, he worked
with uranium, thinking
he might be developing
atomic engines rather than
a bomb.
Nicholson described the
scene as serious, with a perception
that the Germans
were ahead in the race to
harness atomic energy and
spies were all around them.
“Somewhere around the
early part of December of
’42, I came to work one
day, and these quiet, sedate,
intelligent, no-nonsense
guys — all these scientists
and whatnot — were dancing
in the corridor, jumping
up and down, hootin’ and
hollerin’, almost like it’s
New Year’s Eve,” Nicholson
recalled. “What happened
is they got the first
chain reaction — repeatable
chain reaction. A big
part of the project was accomplished
right there.”
The only other time he
recalled such enthusiasm
was the following February,
when British Commandos
successfully destroyed
a heavy water plant in Norway,
effectively setting the
enemy back in developing
atomic power. That’s when
he knew it was time to go,
as the Allies had hope they
could win the race to atomic
power.
“I thought, no more purpose
of me being here,”
Nicholson said.
Still angered by the attack
on Pearl Harbor, Nicholson
had a plan.
“I was supremely confident
that I could fly and
shoot down Japanese
[planes],” Nicholson said.
“I just knew I could do it.
... So, I gave up my deferment.”
But things did not go according
to plan.
Volunteering for the Navy,
ending up in the Army
Because of his involvement
with the Manhattan
Project, Nicholson received
a deferment “where they
would have taken women
and children before they
took me.”
In ridding himself of it,
he did not want to wind up
just anywhere. So, he and
some friends volunteered
for the Navy, where Nicholson
hoped to be part of its
Air Force, back when each
branch had its own.
“I told them I was going
to leave, which changed
my draft status,” Nicholson
said of his job at University
of Chicago. “And within a
couple weeks of reporting
to them what I wanted to
do, the draft board called
and said they wanted me to
go for an examination.
“Long story short, I was
the only one who was accepted
out of our group.”
He was scheduled to
go to Pensacola, Florida,
but when his draft status
changed to 1-A, the Army
came calling. The Navy
kept telling him they would
take care of it.
“Sure enough, two weeks
later, I got a notice, special
delivery,” Nicholson said.
“It said report to Camp
Grant Illinois … on such
and such date for induction
into the U.S. Army.”
“I was really disappointed.
I want to fly.”
A few days into training,
his mother received a telegram
that the Navy wanted
him in Pensacola for flight
training. He entered his
colonel’s office and explained
the situation.
“He said, ‘Tough [luck],
soldier. We’ve got you
now,’” Nicholson recalled.
As part of the Army Air
Force, he was sent to the
Royal Air Force Horsham
St. Faith station in Southeast
England, where he
ended up part of crews flying
B-24 Liberator bombers
— most notably one
they called “Top of the
Mark” — over Germany
with the Second Division,
Eighth Air Force, serving
his country from February
of 1943 to October of 1945.
While he got a chance to fly