Bob Bokram, Navy, WWII

Bokram joined the Navy, ready to defend his country during WWII

By Tamara Stevens
Special to Emmet County

Everyone who volunteered for the military during World War II served their country. But not all who served fought in battle, though they were prepared to do so at any moment.

Robert “Bob” Henry Bokram is one of those men. At 89 years old, Bokram shared his story from his home in Harbor Springs …

‘I wanted the water:’ Joining the Navy

In 1944, Bokram was attending high school in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. His family moved to the Detroit area from Kansas City, Missouri, when he was five years old.

“Hitler had Europe,” Bokram said. “The Japanese had the Pacific. We didn’t have anything.”

Bokram graduated from high school in June 1944. After graduation, he did what “everybody who could walk” did — he enlisted. He remembers getting on a bus and going to a recruiting office on Fort Street in Detroit. He wanted to go into the Navy, to join the Navy Air Corps (now called the Air Force).

“I wanted the water,” he said. “It seemed like it would be better than being in a ditch somewhere.”

As a child, Bokram and his younger brother, William “Bill,” built model airplanes and battleships out of wood – from scratch, not from kits. Bokram’s son, John, shared that his father and uncle created miniature aircraft carriers and an entire fleet of ships, all handmade. The two brothers played out battles and wars in the family’s basement long before WWII. So it made sense for Bokram to gravitate toward the Navy.

“The Navy usually sent recruits to the Great Lakes Training Academy north of Chicago,” Bokram said. “But they sent me to Western Michigan College (now University) in Kalamazoo. There were 2,500 of us there. FDR was going to have pilots and planes to win the war.”

At 18 years old, Bokram was at Western studying and learning how to be a pilot, while taking Naval courses in seamanship, navigation and weather.

“We were called ‘warrant officers,’” Bokram said. “We were given our sailor uniforms and we were going to be ‘ensigns’ (commissioned officers) when we graduated.”

In the one year he was in flight training school, Bokram flew a total of six hours, he said laughing. They flew Piper Cub aircraft, called a J-3, which was a canvas plane. Bokram loved flying. The training aircraft didn’t have radios in them, he said. Instead, they used lights to communicate with those on the ground. There weren’t control towers, either.

In the summer of 1945, Bokram and his fellow students were put on a long train and sent to Ames, Iowa, to continue their advanced training.  In Iowa, flight training kicked into high gear and he flew 23 different varieties of aircraft, including an SNJ with retractable landing gear, called an AT6 in the Air Force, he said. They also flew Luscombe aircraft quite a bit, a single-engine aircraft.

Bokram was in Iowa training for about a year when the war ended. He was in the Navy two years, two months and 10 days, he said.

“Twenty-five hundred guys walked out the door,” Bokram said of the training coming to an end. “We didn’t graduate. We never even got our wings.”

Life after Navy training

Instead, they were each provided with a free train ticket to anywhere they wanted to go, he said. Bokram took the “Twilight Limited” to Kalamazoo, Michigan. His father met him at the train station.

“I knew had to get serious, go to college, get a degree,” Bokram said. He turned around and went back out to Ames, Iowa, because he knew the instructors. Bokram studied Aeronautical Engineering and he continued to fly planes during college.

When pilots-in-training left the Navy, by showing their log book to a flight instructor they were granted a Civilian Aeronautical License. That skill, combined with the good fortune of being a member of a fraternity of 30 men who all saved their monthly stipend from the GI bill and who shared the cost of purchasing a Cessna 140 airplane, makes for a fairly happy college student. His elective courses were Naval courses, and he was paid $75 per month by the GI bill, he recalled.

Bokram studied and flew until he graduated from Iowa State College in 1949. His parents drove out to see him graduate; afterward, they all drove back to Detroit. Bokram interviewed at several companies around the Detroit area, which was the metal working center of the country at the time. He finally settled on an offer from the Budd Company, which manufactured streamline train cars. They also made auto parts for Chrysler including doors, trunks, and hoods; and truck wheels.

The man who hired him had been Bokram’s shop teacher in high school. “Budd made more truck wheels than any other company,” Bokram said.

After a year at the Budd Co., Bokram’s father started a company called the B-H Tool and Supply Company. His father needed salesmen, so Bokram went to work for his father. His brother, Bill, joined them a few years later. Bokram recalls the energy and excitement of calling on the more than 200 manufacturing shops on 9 Mile Road.

Bokram worked for his father’s company for 37 years, retiring in 1987 at 61 years old. During those years of living and working in Detroit, he spent weekends in the winter skiing at Nub’s Nob in Harbor Springs. “We’d fill the station wagon with kids and skis and drive up,” Bokram said. “We’d stay at the Ski View Motel, which is now Teddy’s Griffin’s restaurant.”

Moving to Northern Michigan full-time

Years later, it was his brother Bill who was responsible for bringing Bokram to Northern Michigan. Bill was living and attending college in New York, when he heard about a new ski resort in Harbor Springs called Boyne Highlands. Bill visited Bob in Detroit in January and convinced him to drive up and ski at the new resort. In 1964, Nub’s Nob opened and Bokram began skiing there. He loved it so much, he became a member of the Nub’s Nob Ski Patrol, volunteering his time on winter weekends on the slopes for 10 years.

Bokram went on to teach advanced First Aid for ski patrollers at Macomb College in Detroit. All the ski resorts in southeast Michigan needed patrollers: Mt. Brighton, Mt. Holly, Alpine Valley and Pine Knob. He also found time in the 1960s, during those years of working in Detroit, to build a cottage on Burt Lake with his brother and another family, providing three families with a northern lake summer retreat.

When he retired in 1987, Bokram permanently moved to Northern Michigan, skiing in the winter and spending time on the lakes in the summer – and all the while continuing to fly airplanes. He built a house in Surfwood, about eight miles north of town on M-119. A few years ago, he downsized and bought a condominium in Birchwood where he lives today.

When he moved up north, Bokram had visions of opening a ski shop. He ended up working at the Outfitter in Harbor Springs for six years. He also worked as the harbormaster in Harbor Springs for 13 years.

Bokram has six children, three boys and three girls; four with his first marriage; one from his second marriage, and one step-son from his third marriage.  His brother, Bill, is now 86 and lives in Marine City, Michigan.

“I never regretted joining the Navy,” Bokram said, “even though I never got to fight.”

Bob and his V-12 Unit at Western Michigan College in 1944.

Bokram stands in uniform with his brother, mom and aunt on the steps of their home in 1948.