326th Airborne Engineers reunion

[Walt's Daughter]

I've been invited to attend the 326th Engineer's reunion this week that is being held in Frankenmuth, MI, which is about an hour south of me. My friend Doug whose father is featured on my site

 

http://www.6thcorpscombatengineers.com/Cha...arlesWilber.htm

 

is going to be attending too. I talked with Doug this afternoon and I am going to meet him on Thursday. Just going for one day and will come home Friday morning.

 

I also got a very nice phone call earlier today from a woman named Jane. Seems she found our site this weekend, and when she found out how close I lived to the reunion, she decided to call to see if I would like to drive down. We talked for about 10 minutes about the reunion and she expressed her disappointment in the lack of info there is on WWII engineers. I agreed and told her that it's up to people like us to change that. Her father is Bob Likam, a member of the 326th, a very active person who still has a lot of involvement with his regiment.

 

She informed me that she had already make up cards with my info on it and will share them with all this week. She said she is also bringing whatever info she had on the unit and engineers in general, to display. I told her I would be happy to share what I had too. I am looking forward to meeting her. It's always great to meet yet another proud daughter of a combat engineer.

 

Thought I should add that the 326th was part of the 101st Airborne.

[Walt's Daughter]

Hi Gang:

 

Got back this afternoon. Yet another great trip. Only there Thursday afternoon to Friday morning and wished it could have been longer. But, nonetheless am happy that I got to go and meet the gang.

 

I have photos to share, along with a newspaper article that was done this week in Frankenmuth.

 

The newspaper photo is shown below. I am also including the entire article as a PDF file.

 

Newspaper_Article_9_2006.pdf

[Walt's Daughter]

Bob Likam talks about the many uses of helmets in WWII.

[Walt's Daughter]

Bob Likam and helmet

[Walt's Daughter]

One of Steve's many "museum" items. This helmet was signed by members of the 101st

[Walt's Daughter]

Another angle of the helmet

[Walt's Daughter]

Steve Berge, Doug Wilber, the son of Charles Wilber (featured on our main site), and Bob Likam.

[Walt's Daughter]

Steve's mannequin. I wound up naming him "Itchy"! What you ask? Well we found out that Joe Crilley's nickname was Scratchy. He said he hadn't heard that in YEARS. It was the first time his wife has heard it. So of course, Steve, Doug and I started laughing about Itchy and Scratchy of The Simpsons cartoon fame. So thus Mr. Mannequin became Itchy. We had a good laugh.

 

So here's Itchy and Scratchy

[Walt's Daughter]

Here's Bob, yours truly and Joe.

[Walt's Daughter]

Here's Walter (Wally) Karrenberg. Caught him performing after dinner. Seems he has been entertaining the "troops" at every reunion. He had everyone laughing so hard.