William P. Craddock Jr.

FORT WORTH -- William Perry Craddock Jr., 92, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, passed away Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, in Fort Worth.

Service: (Private) Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. Viewing: Mr. Craddock will be available for viewing 2 to 5 p.m. Wednesday at Shannon Rose Hill Funeral Chapel.

Mr. Craddock was born Nov. 23, 1922, in Franklin, La. He attended public schools in Baton Rouge, La., and later went to Louisiana State University and graduated in ROTC in 1942. Perry entered active duty in the Army as a field artillery officer. He served as an air observation pilot in the European theater and the Rhineland and Central Europe Campaign. After World War II, he served in the Ordnance and Transportation Corps in aviation maintenance and logistics. Perry also served in the Army General Staff in his final years of active duty, in the Pentagon. Perry loved to fly, and he was also an avid reader and knowledgeable historian. He met the love of his life, Nancy Hopkins, in Germany in 1946. They married in 1949 at Fort Sill, Okla. She was the daughter of Col. E.O. Hopkins, who was the assistant artillery officer of the First Infantry Division in Germany.

Survivors: Wife, Nancy of Fort Worth; their daughter, Margaret Craddock Schneider and her husband, Charles Forrest Schneider, of Exton, Pa.; and sister-in-law, Mary Elizabeth Eisenberg of Phoenix, Ariz.