JCC MACCABI GAMES ®

big guy came up to me and asked me
if I was Jewish. I replied, 'Yes.'
"'Good, he said:You're invited to a
Passover seder: I attended an outdoor
seder for 1,000 GIs. Another time, I
found a synagogue in Hawaii for regu-
lar services, and it resulted in being
invited to dinners at six different
homes."
Morof later earned a business
administration degree, worked at the
Morof and Sons paint store in Detroit,
and later held executive positions at
area nursing homes.

Remagen Bridge
Ironically, Willie Stone, 86, of West
Bloomfield, never got a chance to
express his disdain for the Japanese
personally. He was sent to Europe
instead. He first did special train-
ing in Colorado and served in the
Quartermaster Corps in Kentucky
before attending Engineer Officers
Candidate School in Virginia.
"On the first day there Stone
recalls, "our platoon leader told us,
If there are any Jews here, you're not
gonna make it!' I proved him wrong
and finished first in a class of 285.
The anti-Semite tried to break me by
forcing me to run 25 miles with full
field gear, a rifle and a helmet; but I
survived and became a second lieu-
tenant."
Stone distinguished himself in
Europe by helping to rebuild the
Ludendorff Bridge, a railway bridge
over the Rhine River at Remagen,
Germany. The Nazis had blown up
the "Bridge at Remagen," which pro-
vided strategic access for the Allies
into Germany. "We built it on pontoon
boats in three months to get our
troops and supplies to Berlin faster,'
he says.
"One of my big regrets from the
war is that President Roosevelt didn't
do enough to help the Jewish people
during the Holocaust prior to the
U.S. entering the war. We could have
bombed the railroads tracks that were
taking trainloads of Jews to the death
camps or tried some other tactics. We
should have done more."
(According to historians, FDR said
he couldn't divert planes and man-
power from more strategic bombing
in other parts of Europe.)
Eventually becoming a captain,
Stone's army career had a number
of interesting sidelights. He was in
charge of converting a former air base
in Belgium to an American engineer-
ing depot to repair and sell equipment
to citizens of nearby countries; he had

(

1,200 employees on the 500-acre site.
"People don't realize that you have
to do something with all the chairs,
couches, tables, vehicles — such as
dozers, tractors and tanks — and so
forth from the many U.S. field offices
in Europe he says. "It was a real mon-
eymaker for the U.S."

Champion Athlete

Stone then became assistant comman-
dant of a German prisoner of war camp
in Belgium, housing 6,000 prisoners
who eventually were sent home after
the war. When the many European "war
brides" of American soldiers went to
the U.S. to be processed and wait for
their husbands to finish their hitches,
Stone escorted 297 of them in a sec-
tion of a troop ship on a six-day ocean
crossing.

"I attended an
outdoor seder for
1,000 GIs. Another
time, I found a
synagogue in Hawaii
for regular services."

Calling All Parents
and Athletes

-

Information Meeting
Sunday, January 9, 2011 • 4:30 p.m.

Jewish Community Center -West Bloomfield

Come meet the coaches, receive
tryout schedule and hear other
important information.

JCC Maccabi Games
August 14-19, 2011
Host communities:
Springfield, MA and
Philadelphia, PA

For more information, please contact
Karen Gordon at 248.432.5482 or
kgordon@jccdet.org .

Up-to-date schedules can be found
at www.maccabidetroit.org .

Bernard Morof

Following the war and after join-
ing the Army Reserves, Stone almost
got into the Korean conflict in 1950,
but was unable to serve because of a
broken leg suffered in a softball game.
He had been a track star at Detroit's
Central High School (Class of 1942).
Later, he became a champion squash
player who was elected in 2002 to the
Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Stone helped launch the local
Joseph Bale Post 474 of the Jewish
War Veterans of the USA; he recently
became commander for the fifth time
since 1948.
Stone recalls: "I ran track with Joe
[Bale]; he was a great war hero, get-
ting the Silver Star and Purple Heart
medals. He was killed in action and is
buried in the American Cemetery in
France
Stone worked for a while in his fam-
ily's Stone Soap Co. before opening the
W.S. Insurance Group, which he has
operated for 45 years. ❑

I

jc

THE CENTER

Jewish Community Center of
Metropolitan Detroit
D. Dan & Betty Kahn Building
Eugene & Marcia Applebaum
Jewish Community Campus
6600 W. Maple Road
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
www.jccdet.org

December 9 • 2010

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