The Emporia Gazette

May 27, 2012

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Thieves stole Bob Ecklund’s Purple Heart about 10 years ago, but it was children who much earlier had captured his heart and kept it until his death on Saturday.

Ecklund worked with youths in numerous capacities, at all stages and ages of life.

Deone Wilson, former director of the local Big Brothers Big Sisters agency, talked about Ecklund’s 30 years of mentoring and helping the “little brothers” assigned to him.

“I just felt so honored that he even knew my name,” Wilson said. “He’s one of those incredible people. He really made a positive impact on the world. He was such a giver.”

Ecklund had three BBBS matches when Wilson took over the job as director.

“It was sad but one of the first things I had to do was close one of his matches,” she said, explaining that the little brother had aged out of the system by turning 18.

“I know that they maintained a relationship even after the match closed and even after the little brother moved out of state, he would come back and visit,” she said. “He had a lifelong relationship with his little brothers.”

Wilson said that Ecklund thought beyond his own matches and tried to help others participating in the program.

“He would donate tickets for things so other matches could go and participate in community events,” she said.

“He was so, so humble. He was just so generous. He wouldn’t want me to tell. That’s the kind of man he was. He just had this huge spirit.”

Several months ago, the agency made him a lifelong member of its board of directors.

Ecklund also was actively involved in Boy Scouts for more than 40 years, as a scoutmaster and assistant scoutmaster of Troop 152. An Eagle Scout himself, Ecklund had three sons and two grandsons who also made Eagle rank. Though Ecklund’s home troop was at First United Methodist Church, Ecklund’s “home” was wherever Scouts needed help.

Ecklund organized district camporees, Webelos Woods, and other activities, served on Scout review board, the roundtable, helped adults leaders with their planning, and organized the Scout Show at the Lyon County Fairgrounds “as far back as I can remember,” said Bob Cuadra, Scoutmaster for Troop 165.

“He helped everybody,” Cuadra said. “He never turned down a Scout. He was an incredible man. His main goal, no matter what, was to help the youth, to help boys and girls excel and to become model citizens. I’ve got the most respect for that man.”

Scouting honored Ecklund with its Good Scout award for meritorious service in April 2004. The following month, Ecklund received the Liberty Bell Award from the Lyon-Chase County Bar Association. The award is given to someone who promotes respect for law and its influence on democratic government. In 2002, the Emporia City Commission presented Ecklund a citizenship award.

Ecklund also for a number of years spent four mornings a week at Lowther South Intermediate School, helping fifth-graders with their reading through the Mentoring and Personal Success program.

He was there, working with students, when Channel 27 News in Topeka filmed him to be featured as a “Hometown Hero.” He was nominated for the honor by Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Before his involvement in bettering life for children and adults, Ecklund was a prisoner of war for almost two years during World War II. He earned his Purple Heart after the P-38 airplane he was piloting for the Army Air Corps was struck by enemy fire and crashed near Monte Cassino, Italy, in December 1943. The shells knocked out oil tanks and started a fire in the right engine and most of the right wing, according to a Gazette story on Veterans Day 1998.

“I couldn’t bail out,” he said. “My chute was shot up and it was burning.”

Ecklund looked for a place to ditch his burning plane and was half-blinded by blood from a schrapnel cut above his eye. He made it to within a quarter-mile of Allied lines before he “went through a couple of big trees to kill the speed and into a young orchard,” he recalled in the story. “I came down on top of a German observation post.”

When he regained consciousness and emerged from the plane, he was captured by German soldiers. They waited three days before taking their badly burned prisoner to a hospital in Rome, where his head was swathed in bandages, with a small opening to accommodate a drinking straw.

He eventually was sent to a hospital in Nuremburg, Germany, where he met Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command.

“He was big, gross, fat — it’s the only way to describe it,” Ecklund was quoted as saying.

Goering spoke English and protested the British saturation bombing of Nuremberg civilians.

“I said something about the (German) bombing of London, and he grumbled and went on,” Ecklund said.

In the spring of 1944, the Germans transferred him to a prison camp in Barth, Germany. He lived there on a diet of rye bread and rutabagas, with an occasional package from the International Red Cross, until he and the others were liberated by the Soviet Army in April 1945.

Three years later, a surgeon removed most of a lung to excise a tumor Ecklund believed was caused by inhaling smoke in the burning plane. He retired as a captain and later retired from the Air Force Reserve as a lieutenant colonel.

He received the Purple Heart for injuries he received during the P-38 crash; it was stolen in the 1990s in a burglary at the Ecklund home.

Later, Ecklund helped organize the local Order of the Purple Heart and was honored in the Kansas State Senate and House of Representatives in 2003 in a ceremony recognizing Emporia veterans and the city’s place as founding city of Veterans Day.

Other activities and accomplishments are listed in Bob Ecklund’s obituary on Page 2 in today’s Gazette.

Wilson, who now is director of Resources for Independent Living, was stunned and grieved about Ecklund’s death, as were others who had worked with him on a variety of projects.

“I suppose it was inevitable,” Wilson said. “I just expected him to be around forever. He was just so active.”