Bill Maroney receives Marine of the Year award

COEUR d’ALENE — As Bill Maroney sat at the Marine Corps League awards dinner earlier this month, he wondered who would receive the Marine of the Year award.

Then he heard his name called.

“I never expected it,” Maroney said. “When I received it, you could have knocked me down with a feather.”

And when he considered the others it has gone to before him, he shook his head.

“It’s quite prestigious,” he said, “and it’s very humbling.”

He added that being with the Marine Corps League, volunteering and serving, “is a passion. It’s something you want to do. To get something like this is just icing on the cake.”

The 73-year-old was named Marine of the Year by Pappy Boyington Detachment 966 of the Marine Corps League. He’s a six-year member of the organization, serving as junior vice president, commandant and past commandant. He has volunteered with Toys for Tots and burial details.

“Our organization likes to give back to the community,” he said.

“I just like representing former Marines. To me, it’s all about trying to get younger guys to come in. When they get discharged from the service, they’re kind of lost. I want to get these guys to come back”

Maroney served with the military from 1964 to 1968. He enlisted when he was 17 and a half, still in high school in California, so his parents had to sign off on the 120-day delay plan.

“I turned 19 in Da Nang,” he said.

He spent a year in Vietnam as a radio operator with the Third Marine Division infantry unit but served with other units as needed, too.

The Rathdrum man recalls receiving “on-the-job training” with about 30 others as they learned to call in air strikes, naval gun fire and keep lines of communication open.

“I wanted to spend 20 years in the Marine Corps, but they kept trying to send me back to Vietnam,” Maroney said.

In Vietnam, he said, ‘you’re scared the whole time you’re there,” but what really stayed with him was when he returned to Okinawa from Vietnam on his way back home.

He and others were waiting to pick up their sea bags with their gear.

“I looked to my left and there was a whole parking lot full of sea bags,” he said.

Maroney asked his sergeant why they were there.

He remembers what he was told: “Those are the guys that didn’t make it back.”

“When I saw that I said, ‘Man, I was lucky,’” he said.

He and his wife moved to North Idaho in 2011 for the outdoors life as Maroney is an avid hunter.

“Last year was a good year for me,” he said. “I drew a moose tag, so I got a moose. I had a mule deer, got one of those. And I had a heart attack.”

He recovered from the heart attack that struck as he was on his way to a breakfast and ended up driving himself to the hospital.

Turns out, one of his arteries was nearly clogged. A regimen of medication, a stent, exercise and diet put him back on his feet and he’s looking forward to more hunting this year and taking care of his wife.

As for his Marine of Year honor, Maroney is proud.

The Marine Corps League, he said, “is a brotherhood. That’s why this is so important to me. Because of the people that went before me. There’s some really good men that earned this.”