В Лейк-Миллз скончался ветеран Корейской войны и 27-летний директор школы Бойд Форест

LAKE MILLS — Boyd Forest served in the Korean War in the Army before serving as the principal in Lake Mills for over 25 years. Forest retired in Lake Mills and lived there until he died peacefully at the age of 87 on Aug. 18. Earlier this summer, the Leader Independent spoke with Forest about his time in the military, his life afterward, and his connections to the Lake Mills community. Forest graduated from Granite Falls High School in Minnesota in 1957 and was drafted to the Korean War in 1959 when he was 20. He went to basic training at Fort Riley in Kansas and completed advanced infantry training. During training, Forest earned a medal for his sharpshooting and marksmanship. Then they left from California to take a boat to Korea, remaining at sea for the 23-day journey. Forest then went to Incheon, Korea. They were put on big troop trucks to carry them north to a camp where they’d stay in Incheon, which was in the northern part of South Korea, in the demilitarized zone. Forest said there wasn’t fighting when he was in Korea. “We were just maintaining,” Forest said. “The war wasn’t going on, but there was not a peace treaty signed between North Korea and South Korea.” Forest said they did a lot of training and practiced what would happen if people did start shooting at them. The standard tour for Korea was 13 months, with two breaks where soldiers could go as far as Japan to rest. But, Forest’s tour was cut short by a family emergency. He was on his first break in the summer of 1960 when he got a call that his dad was in the hospital in Minnesota, less than four months after he had arrived in Korea. When the Red Cross flew him back home, Forest’s father was still in critical condition, so they decided to station him nearby, first in Wisconsin, then in Chicago. He was due to get out in 1961, but then the Berlin wall went up, so no one was discharged. The military gave Forest the option to continue with another assignment, but Forest wanted to go back to school. In the end, the Berlin Wall led to a three-month delay, so Forest served a total of just over two years. When he got out of the service in February 1962, he went back to school in Minnesota for a degree in education. And in August 1962, he married his wife Patricia, reaching nearly 64 years of marriage before he died. Forest and Patricia went to the same high school but didn’t start dating until afterward. They kept dating while Forest went to Korea. “He was very faithful about writing,” Patricia said. “And I was not so faithful about writing when he was in Korea.” But the two stayed together, and got married shortly after Forest got out of the military. After graduating, Forest got his first job as a teacher in South Dakota, then moved to Michigan where his two sons were born. In 1969, Forest moved with his family to Racine where he taught for eight years. Then they moved to Lake Mills in 1977. Forest started as the assistant principal, then became principal a year later. He was also the athletic director at the same time, and worked at the Lake Mills school district for a total of 27 years. “I could have stayed there forever,” Forest said, adding the district kept asking him to stay. “‘One more year Mr. Forest, you gotta do one more year,’” Forest said they told him. “I enjoyed it, the principalship; I mean I loved it.” After retiring from the district, Forest stayed involved in Lake Mills through volunteering with the American Legion Post and as part of the Rotary Club. His two sons still live in Lake Mills, and he helped one of them, Jason, manage his business, Forest Landscaping. Forest also stayed physically active, and ran the Boston Marathon along with several other marathons. He played tennis and coached for Lake Mills for many years while he was principal. Forest’s memorial will be at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 29, at the Lake Mills High School. And First Congregational United Church of Christ, where Forest was an active member, will hold a service at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 30.