Pearl Harbor veteran was true to the end

It was mid-November, a few weeks before the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and 92-year-old Bill Temple was at home in Virginia Beach, hunched on the hospital bed that took up most his tiny living room.

He apologized to the two journalists who'd come to interview and photograph him for the anniversary that there wasn't more space, and then he launched into a story that he'd been asked to tell many times over the years: how he'd been in bed that Sunday morning when the bombs began to fall, how he'd rushed to Wheeler Field with the rest of his air squadron, and how frantically they'd worked to get as many American pilots in the air as fast as they could.

Afterward, as the journalists prepared to leave, Temple said he had one hope in the face of his failing health. Just one more time, he wanted to attend the Dec. 7 remembrance ceremony at the Pearl Harbor Memorial at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek.

I think I'll make it, he said.

And, indeed, he did.

Six weeks later, he was admitted to the hospital for the last time, and on Wednesday afternoon, he took his last breath.

William G. Temple Jr. was born in Portsmouth in 1919. He graduated from Norfolk's Norview High School in 1937. Two years later, he joined the Army Air Corps, a forerunner of the Air Force. His first duty station was Wheeler Field, a stone's throw from Pearl Harbor.

Asked about his most vivid memory from Dec. 7, 1941, he told the reporters who visited him in November that it was a pilot who climbed into his fighter plane wearing a tuxedo. There had been a party the night before at the officer's club, and the pilot had finished off too many drinks to drive home, so he'd spent the night on base in his party clothes.

"You just did what you had to do that day, I guess," Temple said.

Though he went on to marry and have a son, both his wife and his only child died years ago. In his later life, Temple's family became his church, Calvary Temple in Norfolk, and a close-knit group of other Pearl Harbor survivors who continue to hold monthly meetings in Virginia Beach.

On the morning of the 70th anniversary, they were there beside him for the ceremony at Little Creek.

A celebration of Temple's life will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at his church, 5639 Brickell Road. He will be interred at Rosewood Memorial Park in Virginia Beach.

Corinne Reilly, 757-446-2949, corinne.reilly@pilotonline.com