Dead Page: WW II Vet Walter Launing

When I taught school, I did current events every day. Quite often, I would talk about people who had died. These would be people who had had an impact on lives or who had lived an interesting life. The kids would have to write it down. We did this so often, that some of my students came to call the current events page, "the Dead Page." I continue this on the blog.


ROYAL WALTER LAUING 1921-2007

WW II vet, entrepreneur

Royal Walter Lauing, 85, died June 28th at his home in Naperville, Illinois.

He was born in what relatives described as "a little house on the prairie" in Blunt, SD. At age 5, his family moved to Downers Grove, Il.

At age 20, he enlisted in the army during WWII and served in General George Patton's 6th Armored Division and 25th Engineers Battalion in Europe. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge and Liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

He had a lot of WWII stories and many about Patton. In the middle of one particularly fierce battle, with shells exploding all over and everyone taking cover, Lauing looked back and saw a tank approaching with someone standing on top of it. "It was Patton himself, waving two silver pistols in his hands."

In the 1950s, Lauing started his own subcontractor bricklaying business, which he ran into his seventies. he did work in several Naperville subdivisions and completed the sixteen stone piers of the Grand Pavilion at Naperville's Riverwalk.

In his retirement, he worked as a living-history speaker with Naperville's HURRAH project and volunteered at the local VA hospital.

July 9th Chicago Tribune Obituaries- story by Joan Giangrasse Kates.