Ancestors

William Frederick Mack

William Frederick Mack was born on 5 January 1918 at the hospital in Oswego, New York, a port city on the shore of Lake Ontario. The Oswego Palladium announced him that evening under the heading "New Twelve-Pound Boy": "There's a new installer at the New York Telephone Company. He's the twelve-pound son of William Mack and he arrived at the Hospital this morning." His father was William Joseph Mack, a telephone lineman born at Cork, Ireland, and his mother was Mary Agnes Ratigan, the daughter of an Oswego harbormaster. They had married at St. Mary's Church in Oswego two years earlier, on 20 December 1915. Two weeks after the birth his mother was back in the hospital for an operation, and the paper reported her "much improved." His middle name was his mother's father's: Frederick J. Ratigan had died in 1911.

On 7 May 1918 the Oswego Palladium printed a list of people who had bought Liberty Bonds since its last report, and one entry reads "William F. Mack, Jr." Liberty Bonds were the government loans that paid for the First World War, sold to the public in drives, and parents often bought them in a baby's name. His father's name was William Joseph, so the "Jr." was not strictly right, but it followed him: the Army enlisted him as William F. Mack Jr. in 1941. The 1925 New York state census lists a William F. Mack, born in 1918, at Oswego. The federal censuses of 1920 and 1930 find him there in the house of his parents, a boy of twelve in 1930. His father, born at Cork on 17 September 1882, died on 22 March 1945, while the war was still being fought.

On 21 July 1941, five months before Pearl Harbor, William F. Mack Jr. of Oswego County enlisted in the Army at Syracuse, about thirty-five miles from Oswego. The "Jr." matches the Oswego bond list. He went in as an aviation cadet in the Air Corps, which was the entry to Army pilot training. A cadet who passed the course came out a commissioned officer and a pilot. His enlistment card, serial number 12025304, describes him at twenty-three. He was single, with no dependents, and he had four years of college. His civilian trade was entered as architect. Which college he attended is not known. His family remembered him as a flyer. His son-in-law, Robert Reynold Hoyt, said on his own son's podcast in 2024 that he was "a flyer in World War II, shot down twice over the Mediterranean," who "went in with seven men came out with three." His obituary in 1996 called him an Air Force veteran. In the Second World War American military flying belonged to the Army Air Forces, which became the separate United States Air Force in 1947. A crew of seven fits a medium bomber such as the B-25 Mitchell or the B-26 Marauder, which flew from North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Corsica, rather than a ten-man heavy bomber. That is an inference from the number alone. His unit is not known, and no document confirms either loss. A grandson has said that he met his wife in the war, where she was a nurse.

On 21 February 1950 he applied in Polk County, Florida, for a licence to marry Julie Alice Fielder. He gave his name as William Fredrick Mack, aged 32, white, born at Oswego, New York, and living at 2445 Dartmouth Avenue, St. Petersburg. He had never been married. His occupation he gave as "Stock Market." She was 26, a nurse, born at Gardner, Florida, and living at 170 West Pearl Street in Bartow, the Polk County seat. She had been born Mayme Alice Fielder in 1923 and had taken the name Julie Alice by order of the Polk County circuit court in 1946. Both swore that neither was married and that they were "not related within the prohibited degree," and both signed.

Their daughter Shelley Marie was born on 28 October 1950, and a second daughter, Erin, on 1 May 1953 at St. Petersburg. A son, William, and another daughter, Kerry, are named among his children in his obituary, and their birth years are not known. A son Patrick died in June 1962 and was buried at Bartow; his name was later added to his mother's grave marker. After the war, by his family's account, he flew aerial survey work, mapping the ground from the air. His obituary described him as an airplane pilot who, as the printed notice appears to read, worked in aerial photography. A grandson said he "did like cartography, like map stuff," and that he and his wife "would drive around in her RV" with the children doing the mapping, "even in the 1950s." Shelley, the grandson added, hated it.

By 1963 the family lived at 2119 Serpentine Drive South, in Pinellas Point at the southern tip of St. Petersburg. On 2 October 1963 Flossie Mann, a widow, sold "William F. Mack and Julie A. Mack, his wife" two lots and parts of two others in Block 1 of Pinellas Point, Section B of Mound Section. He gave a mortgage on the land the same day, and two days later bought a lot in the Bay Shore Park subdivision as well. Eleven papers recorded in Pinellas County follow the couple's property from 1963 to 1981. In 1964 he signed an agreement for deed in his own name alone. Mortgages followed in 1973 and 1975, and in 1976 a deed from Olive R. Thompson on the Pinellas Point lots. A satisfaction of mortgage on 13 February 1981 closes the run.

His daughter Shelley married Robert Reynold Hoyt in Hillsborough County on 10 December 1973. A snapshot from the 1970s shows William white haired, in a yellow short-sleeved shirt and khakis, standing outdoors beside the long-haired, bearded young Hoyt. His son-in-law remembered him warmly. Comparing him with his own father, Hoyt said: "on just the opposite of my old man, I love that guy, he was so cool." He also called him "a tough old bastard."

About 1981, the year the last mortgage on the St. Petersburg land was paid off, he left St. Petersburg for Arcadia, the DeSoto County seat, where his wife's mother had been born and her father had once been the county sheriff. Julie died on 15 November 1982 in Hillsborough County, aged 59, and was buried in Wildwood Cemetery at Bartow, the town she had lived in when they married. William later lived at Port Charlotte, in Charlotte County, and belonged to the American Legion there. He was a Catholic. He died on 16 December 1996, aged 78, and was buried at Bartow. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune printed his obituary in its Charlotte County column on 18 December, and further notices followed in the DeSoto Sun at Arcadia and the Venice Gondolier Sun on 22 December. There was no visitation; a memorial service and burial were set for a later date, and the family asked for gifts to All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg. The notices name his children as Kerry Bowers of Arcadia, Erin of Port Charlotte, Shelley Hoyt of Austin, Texas, and William J. Mack of St. Petersburg, and among his grandsons Michael V. Mack and Zechariah Mack Hoyt, Shelley's son, who carries the family name as his middle name. His daughter Erin died at Harbour Heights in May 2000, three and a half years after him.

If William Frederick Mack is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "William Frederick Mack (1918-1996)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-frederick-mack-1918-1996-7c438b.