Wachholz, Paul Frederick

Paul Frederick Wachholz of Westfield passed away in his sleep on the morning of October 12, 2011 at Juliette Manor in Berlin, Wisconsin, at the age of 95. Paul was born in Marcelino Ramos in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil on December 20, 1915, the son of Rev. Conrad Wachholz and Elizabeth Krentz Wachholz. His father was a missionary and teacher who founded the German-speaking Lutheran churches and schools in the two southern states of Brazil early in the 20th century and served as pastor to them by travelling the long distances between them on a mule. Paul came to the US in 1924 when the family moved to Chuckery, Ohio. His father was the church pastor in the village. He was awarded a diploma from West High School in Cleveland in 1934, a B.A. from Indiana’s Valparaiso University in 1938, and an M.A. in 1947 from American University, Washington, DC. He was working at the Library of Congress during 1938-40 when he delivered a book to the office of Wisconsin Representative Reid Murray. There he met and was attracted to the congressman’s beautiful secretary named Leone Jenson; whom he began dating. In 1941 he enlisted for active military duty in the Army National Guard and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he was shipped across the South Pacific in 1942 to New Caledonia, where his unit guarded the US Navy base on the island against Japanese air attack. In May 1943 Lt. Wachholz was ordered to return to the U.S. for Intelligence Officer training at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. In July he and Leone Jenson were married in Scandinavia, Wisconsin. In 1944 he was posted to the European front of World War II and became an interrogator of German prisoners for General George S. Patton’s Third U.S. Army in Normandy and Brittany, where he helped negotiate the surrender of the German army unit on the Loire River in France. After the German surrender in 1945, he was promoted to Captain, graduated from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then became a faculty member at the college. He left the Army in 1946 and taught U.S. and Latin American history at Valparaiso University until 1947, when he was recalled to active duty by the Army to be appointed the first Chairman of the Portuguese Language Department of the Army Language School, Presidio of Monterey, California. In 1949, Paul was assigned as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. General commanding the Joint Brazil-U.S. Military Commission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He returned to Ft. Leavenworth as Director of Instruction for the Allied Officers Section of the Command and General Staff College in 1952, was promoted to Major, and headed the U. S. Army Allied Officer Program, which offered training annually to about 100 military officers from over 40 nations. Maj. Wachholz served as Deputy Information Officer for the Eighth Army in Seoul, Korea, and the United Nations Command in Tokyo, Japan, during 1956-58. His final Army tour was with the Army Intelligence agency at the Pentagon, Washington, DC, where he concentrated on Latin America and the Caribbean until his retirement as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1961. Beginning a second career as a fulltime teacher, he became Director of Latin American Studies at The Manlius School, Manlius, New York, and two years later was appointed Chairman of the Foreign Language Department at W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, Virginia. In his spare time during the years 1962 to 1987, Paul served several terms as President of the Bren Mar Civic Association of Alexandria, Virginia and was a member of the Fairfax County Tidal Wetlands Board. In 1987, when he moved with Leone back to the family village of Westfield, Wisconsin, Fairfax County named a trail beside a stream that Paul had helped protect from development the “Paul Wachholz Trail”. A stone and bronze marker with an inscription in his honor may be seen by anyone visiting that beautiful still-wooded area of Alexandria, Virginia. Back in Westfield Paul and Leone named their home “Many Worlds Mansion”. It served as a base for Paul’s research and writing about history and world travel. He became a press correspondent for the Portage Daily Register in Portage, Wisconsin, and freelance writer of articles and books. His series of articles for the Daily Register about the personal experiences of World War II veterans that he interviewed over the course of several years was very popular. He published one book entitled “Cruise #131 of the Pauline Marie” about a sea voyage that he took to the Azores and Cape Verde Islands in 1993. Into his late 80’s, Paul completed his lengthy manuscript about Ferdinand Magellan, the famous Portuguese explorer and sea captain who first went around the world in the 1500’s. Traveling by plane, freighter and sailing ship, Paul braved the elements to track Magellan’s path, collecting rich oral histories of the indigenous people along the way, where he discovered that Magellan’s Filipino cabin boy was actually the first human to actually fully circumnavigate the globe because Magellan was killed in a battle with a local chieftan in the Philippines before completing the last leg of the journey. Paul also participated in a mission to China to study crane migrations with the International Crane Foundation, headquartered in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and also travelled to Indonesia with a group headed by Dr. Birute Galdikas of the Orangutan Foundation International to study threatened orangutan populations. His other recent travels took him to India, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Africa, and his native Southern Brazil – all of which he wrote about in published articles. He loved baseball and football, and played and coached both sports, including pitching and coaching the Fort Ord, California, baseball team to the Army West Coast championship in 1948. He was an assistant high school basketball coach at Woodson High School and watched one of his proteges, Tommy Amaker, now the very successful head basketball coach at Harvard University, become a college All-American at Duke in 1987. Paul was a true basketball, Milwaukee Brewers and Green Bay Packers fan to the end. He was married to Leone Jenson, who preceded him in death on October 12, 2001, and is the father of Douglas Wachholz of Reno, Nevada; Mary McNab of Charleston, South Carolina; and JoAnne Putnam of Chapman, Maine. His five grandchildren are James R. McNab III, Esther McNab Farnham, Elizabeth Scott McNab Brisson, Aaron Putnam, and Ian Putnam, and he is also a six-time great grandfather. Paul was very close to his seven brothers and sisters: John Wachholz, Magdalene Dumke, Edward Wachholz, Elenore Pipes, Mary Wachholz, Helen Messerschmidt and Ruth McPhail, all of whom survive him. Paul believed that “the thread that runs so true” in life is study, travel, research and teaching, values that he acquired from his father, a missionary and pastor, and his mother, a schoolteacher. He has passed these values on to his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, who will miss him dearly. A Funeral Service was held on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 10:30 a.m. at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Town of Newton, with Pastors Dale Boening and Ronald Schultz officiating. Visitation was held on Tuesday evening 5:00-7:00 p.m. at the Crawford Funeral Home in Montello and again on Wednesday at the church from 9:30 a.m. until the hour of service. Following the service, full military honors were performed by American Legion Post 244 of Westfield and a luncheon was held at the Haystack Supper Club in Westfield. All friends and family were invited. Inurnment will take place on Thursday at the Scandinavia Lutheran Cemetery, Scandinavia, WI at 9:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers, memorials are preferred to St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of Newton Township. Crawford Funeral Home of Montello is serving the family. Please visit www.CrawfordFH.com for online obituaries, condolences and up-to-date funeral information.