William Glenn Worringer

Worringer, William Bill was born October 22, 1925 in Madison, Wisconsin. His father, William, was a grain salesman for Stratton Grain Company, and his mother was a homemaker with cultured interests. As a child, Bill was introduced to such interests, even to the point of having a piano recital. Once he discovered airplanes, everything else was cast aside, and a lifelong passion began. As a young lad, he spent many hours building and flying free flight model airplanes with his friends, and also engineering entertaining diversions, such as wrapping several hundred feet of firehose around the driveshafts of vehicles parked at the local movie house. As the movie patrons attempted to journey home in the darkness, the hose tightened up, engines stalled, and tempers flared, all to the great delight of the perpetrators, viewing the chaos from a nearby hill. Things came to a head for Bill one day while he was working at the pea canning factory. As he stopped working in order to watch an Army Air Corps P-39 slip by on its approach into Traux field, cans of peas continued down the conveyor and fell to their doom.             Graduating from East High School, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and emerged from Class 44D as a fighter pilot. He would continue that type of service in the Minnesota and primarily Wisconsin Air National Guard, where he met up with his best friend James Bultman, the two of them flying P-51’s and early jet fighter and interceptor aircraft together until Bill retired from the service in 1966.  During this period, after attending Lewis College on the GI Bill, he was hired as an aircraft mechanic by Wisconsin Central in 1949. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a job with Northwest Airlines as a DC-4 copilot. Six months later, he returned to Wisconsin Central to fly Lockheed 10a’s, and his 33 ½ year airline transport career was off. Name changes and mergers had him flying for North Central, and then Republic Airlines, retiring in 1984.            Throughout most of this journey, Bill was accompanied by the love of his life, a Wisconsin farm gal with nine brothers and sisters. Quite a treat for an only child! Bill and Elaine Rosalie Viney married on February 17, 1949 in Madison. They would be together for 68 years, and meeting all the requirements to be a good 50’s wife, ‘The Brunette’, as he called her, cooked, cleaned, and provided a wonderful home for Bill and their four children, who eventually provided five grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. Over the years the family enjoyed wood boating and camping in Madison, on the Mississippi river,  and other diverse locations. Once all the kids were big enough to see out the windshield while sitting on a stack of cushions, they were taught to drive the boat, so they could pull Dad on water skis. Bill also taught all the family members to snow ski, and many weekends were spent on nearby slopes, with an annual trek to Colorado for a mountain getaway.            In 1960, Bill and the boys built a large train table, and headed to the local hobby shop to buy trains, rails, all the trimmings for a rail layout. On the way, they stopped at a friend’s house to look at some model airplanes, and Bill’s interest in flying models was reignited. Already interested in aviation, the boys embraced the idea, and the train table became an aircraft factory. Not one rail was laid, but they all enjoyed a hobby that would have them spending thousands of hours in the family workshop together. Elaine always knew what color an airplane was being painted, because the dining room table would be covered with fine red, white, or blue overspray dust that would drift upstairs through the heat ducts. On nice summer evenings, they would all go to the Lodi airport and fly. Rumor has it that the boys spent more time searching the corn fields for Bill’s crashed airplanes, than they did flying their own. They were always rewarded for their efforts, however, as Bill would take them for a ride in the airport manager’s Cessna 170.            1961 led the family to Lake Vermilion, in northern Minnesota, when Bill’s friend and colleague at North Central, Captain Ray Ashley, steered him in that direction. It was a hit with the family, which now had three sons and a very cherished daughter, and in 1967 Bill bought a cabin. Many wonderful summers were spent there, building memories that everyone in the family treasures. Eventually the cabin was torn down, a year – round structure erected, and it became the place that Bill and Elaine would reside together in retirement, until his passing on May 20, 2017. As luck would have it, 1967 was the same year that North Central Airlines entered the jet age, and Willie (as he was known to the aviation community), wanted in. He packed the family up and moved them to Bloomington, MN, so he could fly the DC-9, eventually retiring off the  Boeing 727. Bill and Elaine made one last move to their Lake Vermilion home in 1985, to begin their new lives as retirees.            Possibly inspired by Bill’s love of aviation, the two older boys also flew for Republic Airlines, and retired from Northwest after the merger. His youngest son heeded his country’s call, and pursued a career in Naval Aviation, from which he also retired. The one and only daughter,  not satisfied with being the best looking, ended up with all the brains, and went through the grueling process of becoming a Professor of Mid-East history, currently teaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario. While not admitting to being interested in aviation, she has a comprehensive knowledge of the subject.             Throughout his retirement, Bill continued to enjoy his family,  radio control model airplanes, wood boats, motorcycling, and snowmobiling He and Elaine traveled many places around the globe together, continuing to build wonderful memories. It is with heavy hearts that all the family members say goodbye as he departs on his final flight, but we are lifted by the memories we have, of all the time we spent with him. Bill is survived by his wife, Elaine; children, Randy (Katy, fiancée), Rick (Mary), Robert (Claudia), and  Renee (Steven); grandson, Eric (Emma); granddaughter, Katherina Worringer; step-grandchildren, Robin Halverson, Christopher Pena, and Joel Pena; and step-great- grandchildren,  Natalie Halverson, Nolan Halverson,  Abby Halverson, Sophia Amanda Pena, Mila Grace Pena, and Aiden Pena.            Bill was preceded in death by his parents; and daughter-in-law, Sharon Sellie Worringer.    Gunderson EastFuneral & Cremation Care5203 Monona Dr.(608) 221-5420