Bernard J. Best’s face stares out from decades-old newspaper clippings. A little blurry, the photograph used in each shows a man with a slight smile and the garrison cover of his Marine uniform tilted at the precise regulation angle on his head.
Alongside the photographs are the stories heralding Mr. Best’s heroism and decoration as a Marine paratrooper during World War II.
Mr. Best, 81, of Oak Lawn, a retired longtime rigger for the Chicago Park District, died of a heart attack Sunday, Dec. 4, at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
In 1944, he was awarded a Silver Star for his “gallantry against the enemy while serving with a Marine parachute battalion at Choiseul Island,” states the 1944 story in the Chicago Tribune. “After an order for withdrawal had been executed, Best returned 50 yards to the scene of action and carried a wounded comrade back to safety tho harassed by constant sniper fire.”
A year later, the 5th Division private again was recognized by the newspaper for his actions, that time at Iwo Island. According to the newspaper’s account, his company was advancing up a ridge from the island’s beach when it was stymied by three Japanese combatants who were throwing hand grenades from a foxhole. Two platoon sergeants had already been shot when Mr. Best rushed the foxhole, killing one enemy with a shot from his rifle and then, when his weapon jammed, using it as a club to kill the other two. Wounded, he received a Purple Heart.
His family learned of his heroics, not from him but through a scrapbook kept by his stepmother.
“He never talked about it,” said his stepdaughter, Nikki Schalund. “He talked about how he was a Marine all those years and never learned to swim. He talked about how he was a paratrooper on planes more than a dozen times but only landed in a plane once, because they jumped out.”
The son of a Chicago policeman, Mr. Best was born and raised in Chicago. He worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps, an agency created in 1933 as part of the New Deal, before enlisting, at 18, in the Marines.
After his discharge in 1945, he joined the Chicago Park District as a rigger, a position that in the early days included making its recreational equipment, such as slides, monkey bars and swingsets as well as wrestling mats.
Through his 50-year career, the position evolved into installing, repairing and maintaining all gymnasium and playground apparatus and swimming pool equipment, setting up and dismantling equipment for special events and moving equipment to various parks, among other duties.
“That is all he ever did,” his stepdaughter said. “He liked the people he worked with, liked the job itself and he worked hard. He really liked working outside. He enjoyed his job and came home happy.”
Divorced from his first wife, Mr. Best fell in love with Camilla Veach, a divorced mother of one, as she worked in a deli at 63rd Street and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago that he frequented because it was near his apartment building.
Good-looking but shy, Mr. Best used to stand in the store drinking a can of orange pop, trying to work up the nerve to ask her on a date. He finally succeeded, and after dating for a while, the couple married in the autumn of 1952. She died in 1990.
After retiring in 1995, he became a morning regular at the local McDonald’s, exchanging pleasantries and political opinions with a group of other retirees while sipping his coffee.
“Bernie was a very, very nice man,” said retired salesman Dick Moberg, who, like Mr. Best, joined the group at 10 a.m. daily except Sunday. “He was a man of few words who could say more with his eyes and his face than anyone I have ever known.”
Besides his stepdaughter, Mr. Best is survived by five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held at 12:30 p.m. Thursday at Zimmerman & Sandeman Funeral Home, 5200 W. 95th St., Oak Lawn.
———-
bsherlock@tribune.com
