Like his father before him, John “Jack” Mielke for years drove a refrigerated truck, delivering milk bottles doorstep to doorstep in the days before convenience stores. But soon he realized he had a more civic calling: He joined the Park Forest police force and spent the next 27 years fighting crime in the southern suburbs, once stopping a supermarket heist by shooting the would-be robber.
A World War II veteran and well known law enforcement officer in Park Forest, Mr. Mielke, 79, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday, Feb. 11, in the Crete nursing home where he lived.
Mr. Mielke was born in 1924 into Chicago’s South Side melange of German and Bohemian immigrants. His earliest Depression-era memories were of schoolmates speaking multiple languages, said his son John J. Mielke. Mr. Mielke’s father was a milkman who first drove around in a horse-drawn truck with a block of ice in the back, until refrigerated trucks came around.
Mr. Mielke enrolled at Loyola University, studying economics and English, but he was there only briefly before World War II broke out. He was drafted and fought in the Philippines before being shipped to Japan, his son said. On the way to Japan, Mr. Mielke’s division was told the bomb had been dropped over Hiroshima and the war was over, his son said. Mr. Mielke went on to Japan to take part in the U.S. occupation.
“He never talked a lot about the occupation, though he had shrapnel in one of his legs,” his son said.
After returning home, Mr. Mielke moved to newly incorporated Park Forest with his wife, Lorraine. He took up his father’s old trade and delivered milk around town for Borden’s.
But he soon realized his heart was with law enforcement. He joined the Park Forest Police Department in 1954, working his way from patrol officer to sergeant and eventually to lieutenant in charge of investigations.
“He was an excellent police officer,” said Park Forest Police Chief Francis DioGuardi, a close friend of Mr. Mielke’s.
Mielke said his dad would come home nearly every night and spin great tales around the dinner table. Over plates of roasted pork dumplings and sauerkraut, Mr. Mielke recounted his adventures. They included the day in 1969 when Mr. Mielke was off duty and shopping at a supermarket on Sauk Trail and a man came in and declared his intentions to rob the store. Mr. Mielke drew his 9 mm personal handgun and told the robber who he was.
When the crook pointed a gun at him, Mr. Mielke shot him dead with four bullets to the chest, DioGuardi said.
Mr. Mielke retired from the force in 1981 and turned his attention to his family and two other passions: fishing for northern pike in Wisconsin and pheasant hunting in Illinois.
Those passions passed down to his only son.
“He was an outstanding father and my best pal,” the younger Mielke said. “He taught me to be a man.”
Visitation will be held from 2 to 8 p.m. Friday in Kerr-Parzygnot Funeral Home, 540 Dixie Highway, Chicago Heights. A funeral mass will be said at 10 a.m. Saturday in St. Mary’s Church, 227 Monee Rd., Park Forest.
