A lifetime member of VFW Post 1741, the American Legion and a member of the Intertribal Warriors Society, Bill Warren led the push for the design and construction of the Veterans Memorial in Veterans Park.
Now, thanks to a petition drive launched by comrades in the IWS, the name of the late William C. Warren will soon grace the Veterans Park Building in Veteran’s Park.
“I can tell you that (Warren) was the absolute driving force behind that memorial,” Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis said recently. “The Veterans Memorial is there because of Bill Warren and his friends. Without him having done his part, we would never have gotten that far.”
As a young man, Sgt. Warren made seven island assault landings in World War II’s Pacific theater as part of Company B, 163rd Infantry, 41st Division between 1942-45, and lived to tell the tale.
After the war, Warren went to work as an auto mechanic, log truck driver, welder and fabricator. He and his wife, Irene, also raised a son and daughter.
But for the rest of his life, the soft-spoken Auburn man carried physical scars — a bullet through his back, a shrapnel nicked-wrist — and open emotional wounds. And he endured hellish dreams that thrust him once again into ferocious firefights on islands like Tarawa and Papua, New Guinea,
For all he suffered, Warren used to say that if called upon, he would have done it again.
“I served this country,” Warren, who earned the Bronze Star Medal for service, told the Reporter before his death last year from lung cancer. “This is a country I love.”
Bill Peloza, Auburn City councilmember and Post 1741 Commander noted that the post donated the memorial flag pole to the City and installed a plaque on it in Warren’s honor.
“He was just a great community volunteer, he really was,” Peloza said of Warren.