Friends and family, including grandchildren and great grandchildren, gathered around the driveway of John Mochel’s Downers Grove home Saturday to honor his service to the country with a special color guard ceremony commemorating his 100th birthday.
An emotional Mochel, a lifelong Downers Grove resident, received a certificate and honorary hat from the VFW and a flag from American Legion Post 80.
“The VFW and the American Legion have agreed that this Navy veteran who is 100 years old needs to be recognized,” said Bob Hahn, commander of American Legion Post 80.
“He loves talking about that time, and he is so patriotic. I have known John for years and he never sang and now he sings the Star-Spangled Banner,” said longtime family friend Laurie Riggin, who was instrumental in organizing the event.
“The Navy memories are so important to him. I felt this was a great way to honor that.”
Within days of graduating Downers Grove High School in 1944, Mochel headed off to Great Lakes Naval Center to enlist in the U.S. Navy.
In the Navy, Mochel entered the Radio Materiel School where he received extensive training in radio, radar and sonar operations and repair at the U.S. Naval base in Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay.
In July 1945, Mochel traveled to Pearl Harbor before departing for the Pacific aboard the USS Birmingham one month later.
It was aboard the USS Birmingham that the crew received word of a Japanese surrender following the United States bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Following the surrender, the USS Birmingham anchored in Okinawa, Japan, where Mochel lived in a tent until being reassigned to the USS Cleveland and the USS Sitkoh Bay.
He remembers returning to San Francisco following his time in the Pacific and having crowds gathered on the Golden Gate Bridge throwing candy bars and other treats down to the ship.
“That really touched me,” he said.
Mochel also recalled the injuries of fellow servicemen and “the sacrifices they made make me very emotional.”
At the conclusion of his military service, Mochel took a train back to Chicago along with other servicemen from Downers Grove.
“In the towns we stopped in tons of people would greet us and thank us,” he said. “Once we crossed the Mississippi and entered into Illinois everyone let out a yell because we were more or less back home.”
Finally returning to Downers Grove, Mochel said the community welcomed him and thanked him for his service.
“It was great to be back home,” Mochel said.
Mochel’s daughter, Leslie Rueckert, who accompanied her dad on an honor flight in 2012, said that when she was a child she would “hear a little bit here and there” about her dad’s service “but not much.”
Mochel’s granddaughter, Mandy Calimano, who traveled from New Jersey for the event, was in Downers Grove last year for her grandfather’s 99th birthday.
“I am sure we will have one every year now,” Calimano said.
Calimano said it wasn’t until she was older that she learned about Mochel’s military service.
Coming back to Downers Grove to visit her grandparents individually “and without the chaos of Thanksgiving or Christmas” allowed her to learn the details of Mochel’s life, she said.
She once asked him about his favorite place in the world and Mochel mentioned an island that he visited while serving in the U.S. Navy—a place she had never heard of, she said.
Mochel is a well-recognized name in Downers Grove.
For 111 years, Mochel’s Hardware was a mainstay in downtown Downers Grove before closing in 1995.
John Mochel, the third generation of the Mochel family to operate the store, began working there when he was only 10 years old.
Charles Mochel, Mochel’s grandfather, opened Mertz & Mochel on Main Street in 1884 with his partner, Levi Mertz.
The store was passed on to John’s father, who became the sole proprietor and renamed the shop Mochel’s Hardware.
Mochel took over the store in 1960, following the death of his father, John Sr.
John and his wife Doris, who passed away in 2023, “participated in all aspects of the business and social life of Downers Grove, helping to maintain a vibrant downtown shopping district,” according to the Downers Grove Historical Society.
Today, there is a plaque at the site of the former hardware store marking the family’s contributions to “local government, civic organizations and community service.”
Mochel said, the ceremony “made me feel like I have done some things ok, and maybe I have helped some people.”