Go on, why not sponsor this page for $5.00 and have your own message appear in this space. Click here for details

Click here for details

Those Who Died That Others Might Be Free

 

World War II Hero of the Minor Leagues 

 

Stan Klores

 

Date and Place of Birth: May 3, 1917 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Date and Place of Death: December 3, 1944 Ormoc Bay, Leyte, Philippines
Baseball Experience: Minor League
Position: First Base/Outfield
Rank: Lieutenant (jg)
Military Unit: US Navy
Area Served: Pacific Theater of Operations

 

If he continues his hustling and hits and fields as well as he has in the first few games this season, Stan won’t be around Bloomington very long. He seems destined for the majors.

Bloomington Sunday Pantagraph May 15, 1938

 

 

 

He enrolled at Northwestern University in the fall of 1934 and was ranked as the best end on the freshman football team as well as being a certainty to play first base the following year. But Klores was invited to join the Cubs at Catalina Island, California for spring training in 1935. He left Northwestern to accept a professional contract and was assigned to the Peoria Tractors of the Three-I League where he batted .283 with six home runs and 48 RBIs.

 

Klores was with the Martinsville Manufacturers of the Bi-State League during 1936 and batted a healthy .329. He joined the Montgomery Bombers of the Southeastern League in 1937 and hit .276 with a career-high 69 RBIs. The 6-foot first baseman was picked up by the American Association’s Milwaukee Brewers at the end of 1937 and assigned to the Bloomington Bloomers of the Three-I League in 1938, where his “peppy chatter” and congenial spirit made him a fan favorite.

 

In a May 15, 1938 interview with the Bloomington Sunday Pantagraph, Klores explained his views on reaching the major leagues. “It’s only once in a very long while,” he said, “that a young fellow is good enough to hop right into major league ball. Feller, Ott and Cavaretta are notable exceptions. I really think that five years in the minors are needed before a player is capable of holding his own in the faster circuit. There are so many little things that one learns each day in the minors when he would be expected to know them all in the majors and consequently would look worse in there than a bush-leaguer.”

 

 

Wisely, Klores didn’t neglect his education and enrolled at Northwestern’s College of Liberal Arts each fall semester when the baseball season was over. By 1939, Klores’ professional baseball career was over and he played that summer with the Spencer Coals, a semi-pro outfit in Chicago. And then, in February 1940, Northwestern’s athletic director, K L Wilson, announced that Klores would take over head baseball coach duties from Burt Ingwersen. 

 

In his first season, Klores led the Wildcats to their first Big Ten baseball championship. He was again at the helm for Northwestern in 1941. In a press article in May of that year, coach Klores expressed his views on college players. “Once a college player learns to stick to fundamentals and passes up the fancy stuff, I find that his play improves,” Klores explained. “All that I ask of a player is that he possess a fairly good arm, speed on the bases and fair judgement. If he is ambitious to make a career of baseball he should master the fundamentals in college and leave the tricky stuff until he gets in the minors. That’s what they are for.”

 

 

In October 1942, Klores was assigned to the new destroyer USS Conway (DD-507) as a communications officer. The Conway served in the Pacific and saw action at Guadalcanal and New Georgia.

 

In March 1943, the American Red Cross made contact with Klores while on the Conway to inform him of the birth of his son, Stanley Jr. Martha had given birth on December 5 and had tried, without success, to get word to her husband. It took the Red Cross just five days to let him know the good news.

 

Life on a destroyer in the Pacific, so far away from your family, was a difficult time. “The innings are too long in this ball game,” wrote Klores in a melancholy letter to Northwestern on May 12, 1943. “Guess we haven’t even started to bat out here. I have been looking high and wide for NU men and found only three – all non-athletes.”

 

 

In another letter received in June 1943, Klores revealed his feelings of uncertainty about his situation while reflecting on the deaths in battle he had witnessed. “You seldom get an icky feeling,” he said, “Because so much activity and work keeps your mind from thinking of it. However, now and then a cloud of sentimentalism does center over your head, and you wonder what the future holds in store. You never do forget that the other guys were made of the same flesh as yours.”

 

Upon return to the United States in October 1943, Lieutenant (jg) Klores requested a transfer to flight duty. “Transferred from tough destroyer duty in the South Pacific to tougher duty as a student officer in naval aviation,” wrote Klores in a note to Northwestern from Naval Air Station Dallas, Texas on November 16, 1943. “Two weeks here and not yet a washee. Course runs eleven weeks all of which I hope to conquer.”

 

But Klores was not to complete naval air training. He was called back to destroyer duty and assigned to a brand new vessel, the USS Cooper (DD-695). At the time it seemed a fortunate move as his brother-in-law, Robert Whitehouse, lost his life in a plane crash while training in the Air Force.

 

 

The Cooper left Boston on July 23, 1944 and arrived at Pearl Harbor on September 4. In November 1944, the destroyer joined in patrols in Leyte Gulf until December 2, when she sailed to Ormoc Bay to help attack Japanese shipping. At 0013 on December 3, 1944, the Japanese destroyer Take torpedoed the Cooper.

 

The Cooper suffered an explosion on her starboard side, broke in two, and sank. Japanese ships in the area prevented rescue of survivors for 14 hours. Eventually 168 crewmembers were saved. 191, including Lieutenant Stan Klores were lost.

 

It was three weeks after the Cooper sank, on December 26, that Martha Klores received word from the Navy department that her husband was missing. For a year, the family held out a faint glimmer of hope for his safe return until January 10, 1945 when a telegram officially listed him as killed in action.

 

On January 17, 1945, Martha Klores received a letter from Commander Mel A Peterson of the ill-fated Cooper describing what had happened to her husband. “Lieutenant Klores, who was communications officer,” explained Commander Peterson, “and ordinarily was stationed on the bridge, was on duty in the combat information center for this action. The destroyer had just disposed of one enemy vessel and had trained its guns on another when it was hit amidships by a torpedo. It sank in less than a minute. Every man in the combat information center perished.

 

Stan Klores’ body was never recovered. He is remembered at the Manila American Cemetery. Martha remarried in 1948. She passed away on November 10, 1988. Young Stanley went on to attend and graduate from Northwestern like his father. Today, Reverend Klores is the Pastor at St Patrick’s in New Orleans, Louisiana. “As I was just two years old at the time of my father’s death, I have no first-hand memories of him,” Reverend Klores told me recently. “However, everything that I have ever heard or read about him has described him as a fine man, a man of character and virtue, a natural leader.”

 

Special thanks to Amy Richard at the Bloomington Public Library for taking the time to research and reproduce countless articles from the Bloomington Pantagraph. Thanks to Kevin B. Leonard, University Archives at the Northwestern University Library for superb background information on Stan Klores’ time at Northwestern. And a special thank you to Reverend Stanley P Klores for giving me his blessing in compiling this biography of his father.

 

Page added August 31, 2006. Updated January 23, 2008.

 

Copyright © 2007 Gary Bedingfield (Baseball in Wartime). All Rights Reserved.