WWII vet who worked in Dist. 128 dies

Decorated World War II veteran Jim Zale always denied he was a hero - even when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin recognized his service by giving him a flag that had flown over the Capitol.

"I was only one," Zale, of Mundelein, respectfully told Durbin last year during the flag presentation. "There were thousands of us."

Zale, 84, died at home Wednesday after a battle with cancer.

A mail courier for Libertyville-Vernon Hills Area High School District 128 since 1982, Zale loved the schools and their students. He will be buried wearing a Libertyville High T-shirt, and a Vernon Hills High shirt will be at his side, district spokeswoman Mary Todoric said.

The shirts were part of Zale's final wishes, she said.

"He knew he'd have to have both," Todoric said.

Zale was born in Chicago but had lived in Mundelein for 45 years.

He was drafted into the Army as a 19-year-old in 1943. A year later, Zale landed on Normandy beach on D-Day as a member of the 3rd Infantry Division. He spent the rest of the war fighting through Europe and into Germany.

He saw combat in the French countryside's infamous hedgerows, survived the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate a German concentration camp.

Despite those experiences, Zale shunned the hero label.

"I did what I had to do," Zale told the Daily Herald in 2004. "I feel sad for all those people who didn't make it back."

After the war, Zale held a variety of jobs, said one of his daughters, Audrey Garrity of Mundelein. He delivered bread, hauled gravel and drove a truck, she said.

But it was the District 128 courier job that gave him endless joy in his later years. He loved talking with employees and students, even though he was much older than all of them.

He'd eat lunch with students and talk to history classes about his war experiences, Garrity said.

"That job was his life," she said. "If he couldn't go to work, he was miserable."

District 128 officials honored Zale several times in recent years. In 2004, co-workers treated Zale and his late wife, Elizabeth, to a European tour that included stops at some of the battlefields on which he'd fought decades earlier.

In 2006, the district awarded Zale a high school diploma, a document he didn't receive as a teen because he'd been drafted. It bore the District 128 name, rather than either individual school, but he crossed the stage with that year's Libertyville High graduates at Northwestern University.

Also in 2006, Zale was given a flag that was lowered at Libertyville High as part of its Sept. 11 remembrance ceremony.

"He was so touched by that - that the kids remembered him," school board President Anne Landgraf said. "That was just a special time."

Despite his age and illness, Zale refused to retire.

"He wanted to be with people," Landgraf said. "I think that's what kept him going."

Zale's survivors include two sisters, four children, three grandchildren, several step-grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

Visitation is scheduled for noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 25, at Burnett-Dane Funeral Home, 120 W. Park Ave., Libertyville. It will continue anytime before the funeral, scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26, at the funeral home. Interment will follow at Willow Lawn Memorial Park in Vernon Hills.

Zale's funeral procession will pass by both District 128 schools and the district office, Todoric said.

Instead of flowers, contributions can be sent to the family for a memorial being planned.