Thomas “Tom” Stuckenschneider, who died at age 81 on Oct. 2, remained a proud Marine long after his honorable discharge during the Korean War, from his immaculately taut shirts and parade-inspection haircut to his fierce patriotism.
“I called him a spit-and-shine Marine,” said his wife, Eleanor Stuckenschneider. “He was a Marine all the way.”
The son of a Missouri farmer, Stuckenschneider was one of 10 children raised on 800 acres of farmland and timberland in the hills between Westphalia and Koeltztown. He and his future wife met as children, and as teenagers, they began a relationship that hovered between friendship and romance.
Though he dated another girl when he enlisted in the Marines at age 17, Stuckenschneider closely followed Eleanor through the grapevine. She was the one he called when he returned from service in 1946.
“We totally didn’t write or talk during the war, but he had a cousin who liked me and kept him informed about me while he was overseas,” his wife said.
“When he got home and called me for a date, he told me to be sure to wear that pretty red dress. I asked how he knew about my red dress. He said that his cousin Mary Lou saw me once and told him about it in a letter.”
Three of the Stuckenschneider boys, including Tom, were Marines during World War II. When a military commander learned that two of the Stuckenschneider Marines and one Stuckenschneider who served in the Army were all on Okinawa island in early 1945, the commander arranged for a wartime family reunion.
The commander arranged for the brothers to enjoy a simultaneous leave and set them up with a table and a bottle of whiskey. The brothers caught up on family news and compared war wounds. A jungle rot infection left Tom Stuckenschneider permanently deaf in one ear, and malaria laid him low.
They talked about the harrowing sight of watching Japanese people commit suicide by leaping from cliffs or pulling the pins from hand grenades distributed as “emperor’s gifts” by the Japanese Imperial Army.
Like many World War II veterans, Stuckenschneider refrained from telling his wife such ghastly war stories. In Missouri, he joined a Marines auxiliary league. He was deputized to help the sheriff in emergencies and was certified as a rescue diver.
He wore his Marine uniform to march in parades and color guards. He took enormous pride when his three sons joined the Marines directly after high school and when two grandsons became Marines.
Besides his wife, survivors include daughters Jacqueline Berry of Colorado Springs, Joyce Stuckenschneider of Parker, Janet Sala of Lone Tree and Janine Cook of Tampa, Fla.; sons James Stuckenschneider of Aurora, Joseph Stuckenschneider of Roxborough Park and John Stuckenschneider of Fort Worth, Texas; 18 grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
Services will be at 10:30 a.m. today at Church of the Risen Christ, 3060 S. Monaco Parkway in Denver.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
