Floyd Whicker

After graduating from Reitz High School in 1943, where he played on Coach Herman Byers’ first football team, Floyd enlisted in the U.S. Army. As an Army Ranger in B Company, 2nd Rangers, Floyd was at the forefront of the first wave of men to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, where he was wounded by German machine gun fire and received a Purple Heart. After healing from his wound, he rejoined his outfit and went on to fight in the campaign to liberate northern France. He also fought in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest in Belgium along with the Battle of the Bulge where he received a Bronze Star for Valor. By the time the war in Europe ended, Floyd’s unit had fought their way through Germany and into Czechoslovakia. In 2006, the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachuted onto the Evansville riverfront during the Freedom Festival with a “Baton of Honor” presented to Floyd, and his name is on the first brick to be laid that honors local war veterans in the walkway at Evansville’s Four Freedoms Monument on the riverfront.

He met his wife, Bertha, shortly after the war ended when he returned home from fighting in Europe. Floyd and Bertha moved to Colorado in 1947 where they lived and raised a family for 45 years before returning to Evansville. He is preceded in death by Bertha and a son, Gary.

Floyd is survived by a son, Mike Whicker and wife, Sandy; grandchildren, Joshua Whicker (Erin), Andrea Dodson (Paul), Zachary Whicker (Abigail), Savannah Hulin, and Kelli Knaebel (Tim); great-grandchildren, Paige, Emily, Lauren, Nathan, Hannah, and Samuel Dodson, Ava Jo and John Whicker, Alexander and Abraham Hulin, Annabel, Madalyn and Lenora Knaebel; brother-in-law, Shirl Gambrel; nephews, Steve Whicker and Bob Gray; nieces, Betty Gilles, Patty Jacobs, Shirley Gubler, Donna

Whicker, Paula Naughtin and other nephews and nieces.

Funeral services will be 1:00 PM Wednesday, March 4, 2015, at Alexander West Chapel in Evansville, with entombment at Alexander Memorial Park. Friends may visit Wednesday from 11:00 AM until service time at the funeral home.

Memorial contributions may be made to the American Red Cross of Southern Indiana, 29 S. Stockwell Rd, Evansville, IN 47714. Condolences may be made online at www.AlexanderWestChapel.com.