Meridian Pearl Harbor Survivor Had Storied Legacy: The Football Incident

From the Feb. 24, 2014, My Record Journal by Molly Callahan.

Sgt. Major Andrew V. Schipke died at age 93 and served 26 years in the USMC. He was at Pearl Harbor and was one of the first Marines sent into Vietnam. Born in 1920 and enlisted in the Corps in 1939.

Less than a month before Pearl Harbor was attacked, he and some buddies got into a bit of trouble, when after some serious imbibing, they found themselves at a local high school football game on Oahu and there was Mr. Schipke running down the field with the football tucked under his arms with both teams in hot pursuit.

He awoke the next day thinking it might have been a dream until his commanding officer "roared" at him that he was restricted to base for the next thirty days.

While on that restriction, he had just signed in at 0800 on December 7th and remembers seeing a Japanese plane "about 20 feet up heading right toward me, and so help me, it had a torpedo hanging from under the craft that looked to be as long as the plane itself."

Another of the Greatest. --GreGen