Former Navy shipmates reunited in Wheeling after 70 years

Paul Pickle and Bob Winkle hadn't seen or talked to each other since leaving their World War II Navy ship in 1945. But with a simple online search, Pickle's granddaughter brought the two shipmates together in Wheeling last month.

"It was pretty obvious that we were real good friends," Pickle said. "When they came up the steps here, I can't get down the steps easily, but I hollered at him and he came up here and we gave each other a really big hug."

Pickle, 89, of Wheeling, and Winkle, 90, of Kalida, Ohio, spent hours talking about what they've done since leaving the Navy and recalling memories from their time in the service.

Pickle and Winkle served aboard Patrol Craft Escort Rescue 854, a minesweeper ship with a crew of about 75 people. Both veterans compiled photos and memories from the war in albums they flipped through during their reunion.

Pickle and Winkle met when Winkle got on their ship in New Orleans.

"He was aboard ship the two years that I was in the Navy, and he and I became the best of friends," Pickle said.

Winkle was the ship's mailman and sonar operator, and Pickle worked on the gunnery crew.

The PCER 854 made stops in Key West, the Panama Canal and Pearl Harbor during the war, then stopped in Okinawa.

"After the end of the war, we went up in the Yellow Sea in Japan and we were escorting mines, cutting loose the mines that the Japanese had dropped," Pickle said. From the minesweeper, the mines' cords were cut, and they "would pop up to the top of the water and we would shoot them and they would explode," Pickle explained.

After their ship decommissioned, Pickle and Winkle lost contact with each other.

Winkle moved back to Ohio where he worked as an electrician at the Ford Motor Co. Lima Engine Plant. He and his wife, Cleora, had seven kids.

Pickle lived in Johnson City, Tennessee, and Detroit, Michigan, before moving to Arlington Heights and eventually Wheeling. He worked with Washington Mutual as an insurance salesman. After retiring from insurance, Pickle worked with the Daily Herald as a courier for nearly 20 years, retiring from that job in 2006 when he was 80.

Pickle says he tried for several years while working with Washington Mutual to find Winkle.

"I worked for an insurance company and I was over in offices in Ohio, and every town I went into, I looked at a phone book to see if I could find Bob Winkle, but found tough luck, or no luck at all."

Then one night last year, Pickle, who has three sons and six grandchildren, was visiting with his granddaughter Lindsey.

While they were looking through the album from the Navy, he wondered if they could find Bob Winkle. Lindsey got out her smartphone and found several Bob Winkles in Ohio.

"So I said let's call one, see if it's the right one. If it's not, maybe they know the Bob Winkle we're looking for," Pickle recalls.

Pickle asked the woman who answered the phone if she knew the Bob Winkle who served in the Navy in World War II.

"She got so excited," Pickle said. "Paul Pickle! How are you? We've been looking for you for years."

That first phone call happened before Christmas in 2014, but the two didn't get to meet until Oct. 21 due to scheduling and medical setbacks.

"When Bob was here, they both had their albums out and it was neat to see both of them just going over their stories, talking about what was important to them at the time when they were collecting their pictures," said Pickle's daughter-in-law, Pam Pickle.

As they were rehashing old Navy memories, Pickle's wife, Betty, said, they were arguing back and forth for a while about the size of bullets and guns on the ship.

"Bob thought he was on a 40 millimeter gun. No he wasn't," Pickle said. "The 40 millimeter guns were down on the main deck and I was on that. Those were 20 millimeter up there."

Pickle and Winkle talked for nine hours over Lou Malnati's pizza and Portillo's chocolate cake. They both had a lot of photos that included the two of them with another friend, James Reeves, whom they haven't been able to locate.

"You see photos with the three of them, you know how significant their camaraderie was," Pam Pickle said.

In 2010, Pickle was part of an honor flight to Washington, D.C. He says the welcome he got was more extravagant than when he left the Navy. He had to take a cab home. "But I went on this flight and when we first arrived in Washington, the firetrucks were on both sides squirting water over the plane, and they did the same thing when we came back," Pickle said.

Lindsey says she's glad she was able to help her grandfather and Winkle revive an old friendship.

"It was cool to see modern technology being used to reunite them because it's something they don't use on a daily basis," she said.