Marines from the Marine Band, “The President’s Own”, and the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C. (8th and I) conduct military funeral honors at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., July 29, 2024. (Elizabeth Fraser/Arlington National Cemetery)
(Tribune News Service) — William Henry “Bill” Temmink, a Shell oil sales representative and World War II veteran, died of fall-related complications Nov. 20 at Stella Maris Hospice in Maryland. The former Roland Park and Ruxton resident was 102.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville, he was the son of William Maurice Temmink, an insurance executive, and Mary Blum Temmink, a homemaker. He attended St. Mark School and graduated from Mount St. Joseph High School. He was a riveter on airplanes being built under the Lend-Lease Act.
He studied in the Navy College Training Program. He spent a year at Loyola University Maryland and, while in the Navy, took courses at Villanova, Columbia and Harvard universities. Commissioned as an ensign, he was assigned as a communications officer and decoded naval messages.
Mr. Temmink served in the European, Mediterranean and Pacific theaters. His first assignment was on a Liberty ship delivering humanitarian supplies to European ports and picking up servicemen returning to the U.S.
In the Pacific, he was assigned to the USS Mount McKinley and the USS Iowa. He spent two months in Tokyo, where he witnessed the devastation of American bombing.
After leaving the military, he completed his degree at Loyola University Maryland and joined the Shell Oil Co. He worked in commercial sales and sold petroleum products to ships that called in Baltimore, as well as to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., transit companies, Giant Food and regional Maryland airports.
In 1948, he married Mary Lee Friedel, whom he had met when she was 14 and he was 16.
They bought an unrenovated Falls Road carriage house, which he improved and repaired. Known in the neighborhood as “Mr. Fix-It,” neighbors called him to get pigeons out of chimneys, wake up over-celebrated guests on New Year’s Day, give household advice and provide emergency rides. More distant family members also visited, sometimes for months.
Mr. Temmink and his wife moved to Ruxton in 1985. After her death, he lived at the Pickersgill Retirement Community.
He was a Eucharistic minister and a member of Shrine of the Sacred Heart Church.
Survivors include three sons, William Temmink, of Joppa, John Roddy Temmink, of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Richard Temmink, of Towson; three daughters, Mary Duston Lidinsky, of Baltimore, Karen Travlos, of Ruxton, and Susan Layton, of Urbana, Illinois; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. His wife, Mary Lee Friedel Temmink, died in 2006.
A memorial Mass is planned for January.
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