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<em>William Madison “Bill” Shirey</em> was born 18 Aug 1923 in Keenan, WV, to William Brown Shirey and Sarah Elizabeth Givens Shirey. He was soon joined by sis­ters Elaine and Lois. In the 1930s their fa­ther, an Army Reserve captain, was called to active duty as a camp commander of several Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Arizona, Utah, and Ohio. The family moved with him, so Bill attended a number of different schools, ultimately graduating from Attica High School in Attica, OH, in 1940. He attended two semesters at Ohio State University, participating in its Reserve Officers Training Corps for the full year. He earned an appointment to West Point from the Honorable John Kee, congressional rep­resentative of West Virginia’s 5th District, in May 1941.</p>
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Bill entered West Point on 1 Jul 1941 with the Class of 1945, which later became the D-Day Class of 1944 following the cur­riculum reduction from four to three years during World War II. Bill served in Cadet Company H-1 and was a cadet sergeant dur­ing his First Class year. During his three years at the Academy, he fenced and sang with the Chapel Choir. He was well respected by his classmates, who described him as “thoughtful, under­standing, non-argumentative, mild tempered, yet mil­itary.” They went on to add that he was “sharp, attentive to detail, but always soft and polite of manner.” He grad­uated in the upper half of his class and was commissioned a second lieutenant on the day that Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches of France.</p>
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After a month’s leave, Bill arrived at the Field Artillery School, Ft. Sill, OK, to attend the officer basic course. He mar­ried Jane Dixon Cleveland, sister of West Point classmate and companymate John Cleveland, in Ft. Sill’s Old Post Chapel on 9 Sep 1944. In late September, he was reas­signed to the 616th Field Artillery Battalion (105mm), one of three field Artillery bat­talions organic to the recently reorganized 10th Mountain Division at Camp Swift, TX. By 28 Jan 1945, Bill and his 616th Field Artillery Battalion confronted Nazi forces in the Appenine Mountains of Italy. Bill flew as an airborne field artillery observer in a small, unarmored Piper Cub. He and his pilot flew over enemy lines to direct artillery fire onto German positions, often flying through heavy antiaircraft fire to sight his targets. Bill flew over 40 air missions during almost four months of combat, earning a Bronze Star Medal and an Air Medal.</p>
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Bill remained with the 10th Mountain Division as it began to deploy to the United States for a subsequent move to the Far East. During this move, Japan surren­dered in August, and the war was over. By August 1946, Bill and his wife were settled in Tokyo, where he was assigned to the G-2 Section in MacArthur’s Far East Command Headquarters. Bill and Jane’s first child, Elizabeth, was born in Tokyo on 22 Apr 1949. In July 1950, as the 2nd Infantry Division was alerted for deployment to the Korean Peninsula, Bill joined the division’s 15th Field Artillery Battalion, which arrived in Korea on 1 Aug 1950. He served as the battalion S-4 and then as its service battery commander until he was captured on 13 Feb 1951. Prior to his capture, his sec­ond daughter, Katharine, was born 11 Dec 1950 at West Point, NY. Bill wrote thoughtfully and eloquently about his POW experience in the Class of 1944 <em>50 Year Book, Whom Shall We Send.</em></p>
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Bill was repatriated on 6 Sep 1953 and returned home to meet Jane in San Francisco on 23 Sep. After a four-month leave, Bill was assigned to Ft. Sill as an in­structor at the Field Artillery School. Their son William, Jr. was born at Lawton, OK, on 5 Apr 1956. Bill next was an assistant pro­fessor of military science and tactics at Santa Clara University. Here, on 13 Apr 1960, Bill and his children were struck with the trag­edy of Jane’s death. She was buried near her parents at Arlington National Cemetery. The Army next assigned Bill and his family to Ft. Richardson, AK, where he served as the executive officer of a mountain battalion in the state’s “banana belt.” In 1963, he was sent to Ft. Lee, VA, for what he described as “an exciting stint in the vortex of planning the Army’s large scale logistical exercise, LOGEX.” Bill retired as a major in July 1965 after 21 years of active duty.</p>
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He moved to State College, PA, and worked as a military logistical planner for HRB-Singer (now part of Raytheon) and later as a systems analyst for Bartell Associates. He was an active member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, singing in the choir and serving in several lay leadership roles. He met Jean VanDell at a choir pic­nic in 1968, and they entered a marriage and partnership that saw Bill through the rest of his life. Their daughter Mary was born on 13 Jul 1970. Bill and Jean enjoyed music, col­lecting art, and traveling from their home in State College until moving to Eugene, OR, in 2004 to be closer to family in the Pacific Northwest. Bill died on Sunday, 8 Nov 2009, after living for many years with emphysema and prostate cancer.</p>
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Bill was a courageous American soldier who faced his country’s enemies and the legacy of his personal sacrifice with utmost integrity and loyalty. Our farewell to Bill is best expressed in the words of his daughter Mary, offered at her father’s funeral on 16 Nov 2009 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Eugene: “Dad, as you grip hands with the Long Gray Line, may you be released from all that bound you on earth, may you live freely and breathe freely as never before, and now that your work is done, your course on earth is won, it may be said: ‘Well done. Be thou at peace.’”</p>
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