A Portage World War II veteran celebrated his 97th birthday on Monday, telling stories from his days working on the railroad and playing baseball.
Russell Wyman, known as “Shadow” to some and just “Russ” to others, is a former brakeman and conductor on a railroad, semi-professional baseball player and fastpitch softball player.
He enlisted in the armed forces in 1943 at age 17 during his junior year at Portage High School.
Without his parents’ permission, Wyman said, he and friends Dan DeVine, Cooper Little and Dean Twichell drove to Milwaukee to take their required physicals prior to enlisting.
But Wyman ran into a slight hiccup when he got there.
“Of course, I got the flu,” said Wyman. “So I spent three or four days down there in the Wisconsin Hotel until I got better.”
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Following the brief illness, Wyman and his three friends trained for 12 weeks in Great Lakes, Illinois. But following basic training, Wyman was split up from his friends and assigned to the USS Cohocton, in San Francisco, where he would be appointed to the crow’s nest. Not being a fan of heights, Wyman transferred to a fireman in the boiler room, where he tended to the fires that powered the ship’s engine.
After almost a week at sea, the USS Cohocton, carrying fresh water and ammunition, arrived at Enewetak Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, between Hawaii and Japan, where the U.S. government tested the atomic bomb.
After the war
In July 1946, Wyman arrived in the train station in Portage after about a two-and-a-half week journey aboard his naval ship travelling from Japan to California .
Though Wyman didn’t graduate in 1945 with the rest of his class, he still considered himself part of it. He got together with friends and graduates every week. Typically, the group would go to Club 23 in the Wisconsin Dells for food after church on Sundays, he said.
To officially make him a graduate of Portage High School, the school district presented Wyman with his diploma on Veterans Day in 2021.
Growing up in Portage
Wyman grew up in Portage on Oneida Street near The Friendly Neighborhood Tavern.
He delivered papers for one year as a pre-teen, Wyman said. His route was from Pleasant Street all the way to the river. While it wasn’t the hardest job he’s ever done, he said, it was one of his least favorites because of the long days and because dogs would chase him around.
From age age 14 to 16, Wyman said he set bowling pins at the Ram Hotel, now the Ram Apartments in Portage’s downtown district, and then moved to the Tom Turkey Inn because it paid 4 cents more per hour.
“The Ram’s 6 cents an hour just wouldn’t cut taking care of two lanes at a time,” Wyman said with a smile.
A jokester for most of his life, Wyman said he would take the 5-pin out of the setup during the 10th frame so people couldn’t get three strikes to end their game.
Wyman also remembers an old tunnel near DeWitt Street that ran underneath the railroad tracks. He said only Model A and Model T cars could fit through it. So when he was younger, he and his friends would go down to the tunnel and watch people with larger vehicles get stuck.
“They would have to let the air out of the tires to lower the cars enough to pull them out of there,” Wyman said with a laugh.
Wyman met his future wife, Betty, while they were in high school, before he shipped off to Japan. The two married in 1949, a few years after his return.
Betty worked for the Wisconsin Power and Light Company while Wyman worked on the railroad. They later had three children: Jim, Kay and Peggy.
Railroad
Wyman worked as a brakeman and later as a conductor for the railroad after the war. He said he worked for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, known as the Milwaukee Road.
While Wyman said he has a lot of stories about being on the rails, he specifically recalls being stuck in a snow bank for three days when he was traveling through Madison as a conductor. He said the engineer, who was just a farmer and not really trained to be manning the engines, shut the power off to one of the cars.
“We needed just one more car,” said Wyman with a laugh. “But instead, we spent three days in a snow drift because we couldn’t budge.”
Working on the railroad, Wyman said, there were always hardened, old railroad guys who were known to be tough on the new workers, but not him. He liked to tell, teach and show people how to do things.
“All those guys thought about is, ‘When do we eat?’” said Wyman, joking about the curmudgeonly old railroad workers. “But it was just my nature to help. ... On the railroad you only have so much time to do your job, and if you can’t get it done, then you are delaying other trains. And if you delay the passenger train, well they would let you go home for a few days.”
He joked that he was sent home only a couple times, but his mini vacations were short lived, because since he was a hard worker, the rail needed him right back the next day.
Wyman retired from the railroad in 1968, and he and his wife took road trips to nearly every state before she passed away in 2009.
Wyman said he always liked to work. So when work on the railroad was slow, he would take up a job at a canning factory in town.
He also helped bartend and run the bar at the VFW until about 2010, and for many years served beer at a VFW tent every day and night during the Columbia County fair.
Baseball and fastpitch softball
In the era Wyman was playing baseball and fastpitch softball, nearly every city in the state had a local team. And almost everyone on his team were railmen, except for one police officer, who he said usually played first base.
The team’s home field was the Portage Grandstand, when it was still fairly new and had dugouts underneath it.
He primarily played shortstop and third base. But since he was known for throwing the ball hard, he did a little bit of pitching, too.
And while Wyman said he could throw just about every pitch, his fastball was his best and his favorite.
“I never played the game of baseball without a sore arm,” said Wyman. “But if I would pitch, I usually sat the next game because I would throw as hard as I could.”
His team, which was sponsored by Service Drug in Portage, was one of the best in the area. They lost the semi-professional baseball state championship in Milwaukee in 1956 after winning the district championship.
At one time, Wyman said, Portage was known as the state’s fastpitch softball city. He used to do some pitching during fastpitch, but mostly played in the outfield because he could catch fly balls and throw the ball in quickly.
Wyman said some of his favorite baseball memories had to do with playing on Saturday nights against teams that came up from Madison. They would play while drinking a barrel of beer, and the loser would pay for it, he said.
And while he wouldn’t turn down a cold beer on a hot summer night, his two drinks of choice — a bourbon old fashioned, sweet, with mushrooms or a brandy and seven.
He told the story of going to a party for players on his baseball team at the old Porterhouse Supper Club and Motel in Portage. He said he drank 13 old fashioneds and still managed to make it two blocks home.
Wyman said he had a chance to play professional baseball. He went to a Pittsburg Pirates spring training camp in Florida, but nothing came of it. He said he also had an offer to play baseball at spring training in Florida with the Cubs, but didn’t take the opportunity because he couldn’t afford to pay his travel if he didn’t make the team.
Though he never made it to the big leagues, Wyman said he was still pretty well-known in the area as a baseball player.
He told the story of a friend of his from the service who was passing through town after the war. The young veteran asked an employee of a filling station in Portage if he knew Russ Wyman and where he could find him.
Wyman said the station attendant replied with a quip.
“You see those bright lights down there,” Wyman said the employee commented while pointing at the baseball field’s lights. “He’s down there playing ball.”
He said the last ball game he played in was an old-timers softball game, where he hit two homeruns.
As the story went, Wyman dug his feet into the dirt of the batter’s box in his first at-bat of the game. As a pitch came in, he gave a mighty swing and it flew over the fence.
“I wasn’t a power hitter,” said Wyman. “So I think everyone was a bit surprised.”
The next time he went up to bat in the seventh inning of the game, he said a few of his friends were in the stands joking that he was a “sorry hitter.”
The next pitch, he sent another ball over the fence.
While his railroad conducting and baseball playing days are far behind him, Wyman still loves blowing his train whistle and watching televised Brewers baseball games. He keeps up with how the team is doing and doesn’t miss a chance to explain how they could play better.