WICHLACZ, TRAVIS M. (Dec. 15, 1982 -- Feb. 5, 2005)The 33rd soldier from Wisconsin to die in the Iraq war, he was born in West Bend, the largest city between Fond du Lac and Milwaukee, and raised by Dennis Michael Wichlacz and the two women he married, first Laura Lee Wellman and second, on April 11, 1997, Virginia S. Smith. After graduation in 2002 from high school, where he was on the track, football, and wrestling teams, Travis joined the U. S. Marines and was, as Bob Kopecky, his wrestling coach, said, "pretty excited going over to Iraq."
The first Wichlacz who came Poland and settled in Rietbrock, Wisconsin, in the days when horse-drawn wagons crawled along the roads would have turned over in his grave if he knew that Travis had five Bibles among his possessions in Iraq.
Lance Cpl. Wichlacz, who was assigned to the 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, and went to Iraq in the fall of 2004, was killed when a bomb exploded while he was on rotine patrol in Babil Province, sothwest of Baghdad. One wonders whether his wife of four days, nine months, or whatever it was, received the insurance money and his father nothing. Travis was only 22 years old when they buried him from St. Mary's Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in West Bend.
Author: Edward Pinkowski - e-mail: [email protected] - (2011)