...A great life Frederick L. “Freddy” Simon shared his story Saturday during a visit to the Pittsburg Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers By NIKKI PATRICK The Morning Sun Posted Mar 13, 2010 @ 11:06 PM PITTSBURG — Frederick L. “Freddy” Simon believes the Lord probably wanted the public to be able to enjoy his steak burgers and frozen custard. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have made it back alive from his World War II service in the Pacific. Simon, who turned 85 on Feb. 24, shared his story Saturday during a visit to the Pittsburg Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers restaurant. “I was born in Colwich, west of Wichita,” he said. “My father owned Angus beef cattle and we butchered them. That’s when we started making steak burgers.” That’s also where the frozen custard started. One of Simon’s chores was to crank the family’s old-fashioned ice cream maker. He was 18 when World War II started. “I wanted to be a fighter pilot so I thought I’d join the Navy Air Corps, but I was a little bit color blind,” Simon said. “They told me that the Army Air Corps wasn’t so particular, so I tried that, but the same thing happened.“ So he joined the U.S. Army. “They put me in the Cavalry and I had basic training at Fort Riley,” he said. “Then we went by train to San Francisco and got on a converted luxury cruise liner. There were 13,000 troops on that ship, and they let us go up on deck three times a day. We zig-zagged all the way to New Guinea. There was no dock where we landed, so we had to go down ropes with our full packs and guns.” Next came the Admiralty Islands. “We had pretty rugged combat there,” said Simon, who served under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. “Then we boarded ships and didn’t tell us where we were going.” The ships were headed to the Philippines. MacArthur, who had left those islands in March 1942, was making good on his famous promise to return. “I was in the first wave going in to Leyte in October, 1944,” Simon said. “Our planes had bombarded the beach first, so we had ready-made foxholes. MacArthur landed about six hours later.” The troops spent 70 hard days before they moved on to Luzon and headed for Manila. “We got cut off for a week, with no food,” Simon said. “Being an old farm boy, I said we should make tea, so we boiled leaves and that kept us going.” The trip by ship to Luzon was also perilous. “There were 200 to 300 ships in that armada,” he said. “I didn’t know this until I read it later, but 27 of those ships got sunk by kamikaze planes, and another 40 got hit. MacArthur said we had to get to Manila, so they put us on the main highway, and away we went.” One reason for the urgency was the need to liberate prisoners of war. “At one camp there were survivors of the Bataan Death March, and the Rangers went in and liberated them,” Simon said. “They had been slated for execution the next day.” Fighting was heavy in Manila. Simon carried a Browning Automatic Rifle, which made him a prime target for snipers, and one shot hit him in his ammunition belt. “If that ammunition had gone off, I wouldn’t be here today,” Simon said. “I still have the bullet that hit me.” A focal point of the fighting was at the Manila Hotel. “MacArthur’s office, before he left the Philippines, was on the fifth floor of the hotel,” Simon said. “That’s where he wanted to get back to. We had the main floor, but the Japanese held the basement and all the other floors.” The Americans prevailed, and Simon still has an ashtray from MacArthur’s office. A block from the hotel, he and his buddies were hit by an artillery barrage, and Simon was wounded in the leg. “They wrapped my leg up and got me back in the fighting,” he said. From Manila, his unit, down to 160 men, was sent to Antipolo, a pleasant vacation spot before the war. “The Japanese dug caves, and they had mortars mounted on railroad tracks,” Simon said. “When the bombers went over, they’d just move the mortars back into the caves. I don’t know how, but we took those caves.” He credits the Japanese with being tough fighters. “But I knew we were winning,” Simon said. “We built up a nice camp and started training for landing on Japan. We were going in on the first wave, on Kyushu, the southern island. If that had happened, I wouldn’t be here now. When we heard that the atomic bombs had been dropped and the war was over, we were the happiest guys in the world.” But he still made it to Japan, as a part of the occupation forces. “My first duty was to disarm a Japanese hospital, and that was scarier to me than those caves on the island,” Simon said. “But the Japanese were wonderful people when they got their freedom, and would have done anything for us.” His time in Japan was brief. “I had 75 points, so I was able to go home,” he said. “I got on the first boat heading out of Tokyo. When we sailed in under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, there were bands and dancing girls and a big party. I had a big steak, and drank milk for the first time in 2 1/2 years.” He returned home and, in 1947, married his beloved wife, Norma Jean. He met her while attending a wedding with his sister. “Norma Jean was one of the bridesmaids,” Simon said. “I saw her, turned to my sister and said, ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’ We’ll celebrate our 63rd wedding anniversary on Aug. 21.” They began having children, and Simon often treated family and friends to his steak burgers. “My thing is, I smash the burgers down thin, so when you bite into them, you get the meat before you get the bun,” Simon said. He also flavored the meat with a secret blend of herbs and spices. “There’s another chain that uses 11 herbs and spices,” said his son, Randy Simon, who accompanied him to Pittsburg. “We have 12.” He said that his father joked back in 1962 about opening a stand in Wichita and selling steak burgers. About eight years ago, Randy Simon, who has 29 Panera restaurants in Lawrence and the Kansas City area, started thinking seriously about the idea. His brother, Bill, came in, along with another partner, Scott Redler. “Dad got involved, and lent his name to the endeavor,” Randy Simon said. “Now we have 37 Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburger restaurants, and we’ll probably have 50 by the end of the year.” The restaurants are decorated with photos of Simon. “If you look at all those pictures, you’ll know more about my life than I do,” he joked. He loves visiting with the public, and has also started talking at high schools about his war experiences. “That’s the most rewarding thing for me,” Simon said. “I’m the luckiest man in the world.” Copyright 2010 Morning Sun. Some rights reserved