Francis Lally Winner

West Point, 1951

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Jim Winner on August 8, 2003:

Francis L. (Willie) Winner ?I leave to Daphne distribution of whatever I owned that is still useful. My auto?s are too good to sell; give them to a family member. I?ve already given Jim a nice smile, Bob a fearsome lawyer?s scowl, Tom my wit, and Paul some Irish-Jewish blarney, and to my two daughters, my heart. Love, Pop? Scarborough, July 1, 1994 _______________________________________________________ Written in 1998 by Willie Winner: In 1930?s rural Iowa, we had never seen a soldier. In 1934, a company of infantry marched past my mother?s house in Denison, population 3,000. The soldiers had been mobilized by the Governor to preserve order in the County. Foreclosed farmers were demonstrating their displeasure with judges and sheriffs serving writs on their colleagues. The soldiers looked better than Alvin York. They wore campaign hats (blue braid), O.D.?s, wrap leggings, and web rifle belts and they carried Springfield O3?s. Eight years old, I instantly resolved to become a soldier. Army life looked like a ticket out of farm life and it was ? in 1944, when I became 18 and enlisted at Camp Dodge. My mother came with me and stayed with my uncle, who had been appointed an Army Captain (Ordnance), because of his experience in the automotive business. He drove me in his Cadillac to the post, where I thrilled to the salute he received at the main gate, and at the reception center where they left me, he scowling at the inconvenience, and my mother, sobbing profusely. Off to Camp Roberts, California, for training as an infantry replacement. I worried the war would end before I could get there. I got to the Ardennes, and the Rhineland campaigns, was slightly wounded while clambering on the Remagen Bridge. I survived the Wehrmacht and the cold and became, solely through attrition, a platoon sergeant. I came back to Iowa with a Purple Heart, and Bronze Star, and Combat Infantryman?s badge. Having no interest in any other life, I re-enlisted, applied for an Army appointment to West Point, and entered U.S.M.A. in 1947. West Point, at that time, was tough as a boot: no girls, no money, no nothing. I was editor of The Pointer and once had a date in New York City with Beverly Sills. I did well in English and Russian, and dreadfully in calculus and chemistry. I spent a couple of months in the last chemistry section, counting the bodies between me and rock bottom. Yet I graduated ? one of the proudest days of my life. My mother and kid sister showed up, and I was off for a cold-war tour of Europe. While there, I was smitten hard by a British Army Brat, and brought her back to the USA, where the G.I. Bill pushed me through Creighton Law School. Then, to a legal career in Western Nebraska, specializing in trial practice: International Society of Barristers, The American College of Trial Lawyers, and listing in the original edition of The Best Lawyers in America. I love to read and write, and have become a pretty good, yet unplumbed, talker. I have: ? Been a founding member of what was the largest law firm in Western Nebraska; and a professor of Trial Advocacy in Lincoln; ? Begun the Nebraska Panhandle Legal Aid in 1959, before it was funded or trendy; ? Organized the rural poor of Eastern Wyoming to acquire a voice in government; ? Been founder and original editor of The Prairie Barrister, then a magazine of legal humor and minutiae which has since grown into the official publication of the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys; and have also published in theological circles; ? Been ordained a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver. ? Soldiered also in the Army Reserve and National Guard, taking retirement as Brigadier General in 1977. ? Worked the New York Times Sunday crossword since 1946 ? solved, or nearly solved, more than a few. Daphne and I spawned six children, who with their children are scattered about the USA. - Frank Winner, 1998

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