S/SGT Thomas L. Blickle
1929 – 2019
USAF
KOR
Thomas Leland Blickle was born May 5, 1929 in Fort Madison, Iowa, to Thomas and LoReine Rafferty Blickle.
In 1947, Blickle graduated from Lyons Township High School in La Grange, where he played football and captained the wrestling team. He attended college at Purdue before entering the U.S. Air Force on September 1, 1951, where he served in the 35th Air Division of the Air Defense Command.
The Division “equipped, administered, and trained its assigned and attached units and placed those forces in a maximum state of readiness for use in air defense” during the Korean War. He was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant on April 26, 1953.
On June 3, 1952, he married Dorothy Reck in Cook County; they raised three children in Barrington.
Blickle owned Executive Coach Corp in Fox River Grove.
SSGT Thomas Blickle died November 17, 2019, and is buried with his wife and son in Barrington’s Evergreen Cemetery.
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Remember. Honor. Teach.
Courtesy of Signal Hill Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.