Orville J. Wegley, better known as Jack, was born on October 26, 1920, in Williston, North Dakota. He was the son of Joseph Wegley and Tena Olson Wegley, and he spent his life closely connected to Williston and the surrounding Williams County community.

Jack belonged to a branch of the Wegley family that had moved far west of the family’s earlier Pennsylvania roots. His father’s ancestry connected him to the German-American Wegley line, while his mother’s Olson family contributed a Norwegian heritage, a combination later recorded on Jack’s death certificate as Norwegian-German.

Growing Up in Williston

Jack was the youngest child of Joseph and Tena Wegley. His father, Joseph, became a prominent member of the Williston community and served as mayor, giving the family a visible place in the civic life of the growing North Dakota town.

Jack came of age during the Great Depression, when economic hardship affected families throughout the Great Plains. Before he reached his twenty-first birthday, however, military service would take his life in a very different direction.

Joining the North Dakota National Guard

Existing family military records give June 2, 1939, as Jack’s original enlistment date. If that date is correct, he was 18 when he joined the North Dakota National Guard.

The surviving roster of the 164th Infantry Regiment lists Orville J. Wegley, Army serial number 20711019, of Williston, with a birth date of October 26, 1920. His father, Joseph Wegley, is listed as his next of kin, which makes the identification particularly strong.

February 10, 1941

The date February 10, 1941 appears in military records connected with Jack, but it should not be interpreted as a separate enlistment. On that date, the North Dakota National Guard’s 164th Infantry Regiment was inducted into federal service, meaning Guard members became part of the active United States Army.

Jack was therefore part of a much larger mobilization of North Dakota National Guardsmen as the United States prepared for the possibility of entering the expanding global war. Pearl Harbor was still nearly ten months away, but the federal government had already begun bringing Guard units onto active duty for training.

World War II and the 164th Infantry

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the regiment’s role changed dramatically. The 164th Infantry was eventually sent to the Pacific and became part of the Americal Division, serving in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater. The regiment fought in major Pacific operations, including Guadalcanal.

North Dakota’s veteran register specifically records Orville J. Wegley as having served in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater. It also records his separation from the Army at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, on April 10, 1944, as a sergeant.

That means Jack’s military service was more substantial than the earlier version of this biography suggested. Rather than serving separately in the National Guard and Army, the evidence indicates a continuous progression from state National Guard service into federal Army service during World War II.

His World War II Registration Card

Another surviving military document records Jack as Orville J. Wegley, age twenty-three, living on Route 1 in Williston, Williams County, North Dakota. It gives his birth date as October 26, 1920, and his birthplace as Williston, North Dakota.

The card names Mrs. Tena Wegley as the person who would always know his address. At the time the card was completed, his employment was described simply as “staying at home,” with Williston listed as his location.

This card is useful primarily for confirming his identity, birth information, residence, and relationship to his mother. It should not be used alone to reconstruct the chronology of his military service because Guard and federal Army records provide much more specific information.

Marriage to Nadine Melland

Only weeks after leaving military service, Jack married Nadine Melland on May 29, 1944. His marriage therefore marked the beginning of his transition from wartime military life back into civilian life.

Jack and Nadine remained married for more than fifty years. His 1995 death certificate still identifies him as married to Nadine Melland, and Nadine herself was the informant who supplied information for the certificate.

I found both their marriage license and certificate, which, while not easy to read, provides further documented information about his life and family connections.

A Career With the Postal Service

Jack eventually built a long civilian career with the United States Postal Service. His death certificate records his usual occupation as mail carrier and identifies the Postal Service as the industry in which he worked.

That occupation gives us a particularly fitting picture of Jack’s connection to Williston. After military service took him away from North Dakota during his youth, he returned home and spent his working years serving the community in a much different capacity.

His Final Home in Williston

By the end of his life, Jack and Nadine were living at 2008 8th Avenue East in Williston. His death certificate lists the same address for Nadine, confirming that the couple lived there together in 1995.

The certificate also records that Jack had completed twelve years of education. His race was recorded as white, and his ancestry was given as Norwegian and German, reflecting the backgrounds of the Olson and Wegley sides of his family.

Why I like to include things like death certificates when I find them is because they record more than just the person’s name and the date they died. Often, they give us invaluable information about the person we might not otherwise know.

July 4, 1995

Orville “Jack” Wegley died on July 4, 1995, at Mercy Hospital in Williston. He was seventy-four years old and had lived his entire life with Williston as the central place in his story, even though military service had carried him far beyond North Dakota during his younger years.

The copy of the death certificate currently available has the cause-of-death section obscured, so I would not state a cause until an unobscured copy or another medical record is found. The certificate otherwise provides strong documentation for his birth, death, marriage, occupation, parents, residence, and burial.

Riverview Cemetery

Jack was buried at Riverview Cemetery in Williston, North Dakota. The funeral arrangements were handled by Everson Funeral Home in Williston.

His burial brought his story back to the same community where it began nearly seventy-five years earlier. Williston had been his birthplace, family home, postwar residence, workplace, place of death, and ultimately his final resting place.

Jack’s Place in the Wegley Family

Jack’s life connects the Wegley family directly with one of the defining events of the twentieth century. He entered the North Dakota National Guard as a young man before the United States entered World War II and became part of the 164th Infantry when the regiment was called into federal service in 1941.

By the time he left the Army in April 1944, Jack had reached the rank of sergeant and had served in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater. He then returned to North Dakota, married Nadine, and built a civilian life in the community where he had been born.

His story also reminds us to interpret military records carefully. What initially looked like separate Army and National Guard enlistments appears instead to represent the transition of a young North Dakota Guardsman into federal military service as the country prepared for war.

Orville “Jack” Wegley’s life ultimately stretched from the farms and small towns of 1920s North Dakota to wartime service in the Pacific and then back home to decades of ordinary community life. His military service was an important chapter, but his fifty-one-year marriage to Nadine, his career as a mail carrier, and his lifelong connection to Williston make up the much larger story of the man who came home.