Schultz, Robert O.

Robert O. Schultz, formerly of Waterloo, a U.S. Army veteran of World War II who survived nearly five months of captivity as a German prisoner of war, died Friday in Springfield, Mo., after a long battle with heart and kidney failure. He was 87.

Mr. Schultz was born March 22, 1923, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of Blanche Noska Schultz and Otto Schultz. While still a child, he moved to Waterloo, where he helped support his family by peddling newspapers on street corners for the Waterloo Courier during the Great Depression. In 1941, he graduated from Sacred Heart Catholic High School.

After high school, he went to work first at Hinson's Manufacturing and then at the John Deere Waterloo Tractor Works. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in December 1942, underwent basic training at Camp Hood, Texas, and was sent to the island of Oahu in Hawaii for training as an anti-tank cannoneer. He attended Amherst College in 1943-44 under a prep school program for officer candidate school.

In 1944, Mr. Schultz was sent to England and was deployed to the continent of Europe in the early winter of 1944. He was captured by the Germans on Dec. 19, 1944, in the Argonne Forest of Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. On Christmas night 1944, he was in a boxcar packed with American prisoners on a train traveling east into Germany when the train was mistakenly attacked and bombed by Allied bombers. Unable to escape the boxcar because his feet had suffered frostbite from several nights sleeping in the open in bitter cold temperatures after his capture, Mr. Schultz watched fellow prisoners who did escape the boxcar be blown up by friendly fire.

Mr. Schultz was held in various prisoner of war camps in Germany but due to his refusal to cooperate with his German captors and his continual resistance to their authority, he was finally transferred to a disciplinary work camp at Lieznitz, Germany, about 20 miles west of Dresden. He was the only American held at the camp, where prisoners were forced to work in a rock quarry. He was liberated by the Allies in April 1945 while prisoners from his camp were on a forced march in eastern Germany.

On Feb. 26, 1946, he was married to the former LaVonne Schilling, who he had known since high school, at St. John's Catholic Church in Waterloo. He returned to work at Deere in 1946 and retired in 1982.

Mr. Schultz loved the outdoors and enjoyed hunting and fishing. For more than 40 years, he maintained a cabin on the Wapsipinicon River near Independence, where he entertained family and friends with boat rides and barbecues.

In 2007, Mr. and Mrs. Schultz moved from Waterloo to Springfield, Mo.

Mr. Schultz is survived by his wife; four sons, Richard of Schererville, Ind., Robert of Fremont, Neb., Kenneth of Springfield, Mo., and Steven of Fremont, Neb.; one daughter, Judith Daubenmier of Brighton, Mich.; one sister, Sister Angelica Schultz of Dubuque, Iowa; 12 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his parents, a sister, and one granddaughter.

Visitation will be 9:30 a.m. Monday at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Springfield, Mo., followed by an 11 a.m. funeral mass.

Visitation in Waterloo will be from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday at Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup Funeral Service on South Street, followed by burial at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Arrangements in Springfield are being handled by Herman H. Lohmeyer Funeral Home, and in Waterloo, by Hagarty-Waychoff-Grarup Funeral Service on South Street, (319) 234-6274.