STILLWATER OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE / 10
The Cowboy Delegation was afforded the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit many of the places that feature in these stories: we traced the entire length of the Bataan Death March; rode a tiny boat across the bay to visit the ruins of Corregidor Island; were allowed special access to Santo Tomas University; and viewed a Japanese stronghold colloquially known as“ the Diplomat Hotel.” We spent time at tiny, out-of-the-way monuments and at the expansive American Memorial Cemetery where approximately 17,000 service members are buried. And all along the way, we collected Stillwater stories.
We welcome the community to the Stillwater History Museum to learn more from our carefully curated exhibition, beginning in December 2025.
INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHIES
DEAN SCHEDLER War Correspondent
Dean Schedler( far left), capturing a World War II story in the Pacific
By the end of January 1945, he and a selective few were picked to accompany a“ lighting column” with orders to liberate the civilian internment camp in the walled campus of the University of Santo Tomas. His columns were some of the first reports the American public heard of liberated prisoners of the Japanese. He also witnessed the liberation of Los Banos and remained in the Philippines through war’ s end, and was among the select reporters who covered the beginning of the war crimes trials held in Manila.
Schedler continued reporting for the AP until his official disaccreditation in 1946. Schedler’ s reports were published across the globe, and his exploits told in a plethora of best-selling wartime books by Clark Lee, Vern Haugland and Oliver Grambling. After the war, he worked briefly in the Truman Administration, and lived around Washington D. C. until his death in 1970. He is buried with his family at Fairlawn cemetery in Stillwater.
WILLIAM BERRY United States Navy
O
riginally from nearby Ripley, William Berry and his family moved into the large colonial revival estate just south of Stillwater in the late 1920s. After graduating from the Missouri Military Academy, Oklahoma A & M and Oklahoma University, he began a promising
Dean Schedler, c. 1945
B orn and raised in Stillwater, Dean Schedler attended Oklahoma A & M for a year before transferring to George Washington University in Washington D. C. Upon graduation, he worked for the National Recovery Administration until it ended in 1935. At that time, he went to live with his brother, Edmund, in Manila, Philippines. He worked as a stockbroker at the international stock exchange, then also for the Manila Bulletin. When the Japanese invaded, Schedler began working with the Army Corps of Engineers as a civilian contractor; shortly thereafter, he became accredited with the Associated Press and a correspondent embedded with the beleaguered troops defending the Bataan peninsula. Before Bataan fell, he made it to the island fortress of Corregidor, where he became one of the last correspondents to successfully evade capture in a daring flight to Australia. Schedler followed the American Armed Forces throughout the Pacific for the duration of the war, extensively covering the New Guinea Campaign.
For a brief stint in the Spring of 1944, Dean returned to Stillwater to see his family and to speak with various organizations about his experiences abroad. Soon after, he was back in the Pacific, joining Gen. Douglas MacArthur upon his triumphant return to the Philippines on Oct. 20, 1944. Schedler remained with the United States Army as it battled toward Manila.
William Berry, right, appears in the Stillwater NewsPress, Sept. 1, 1945.
STILLWATER OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE / 10