Charlotte Klopotek, 78, Park Ridge, who died Aug. 9, was the widow of a World War II fighter pilot ace who was later killed in a plane crash near the Stevens Point Municipal Airport.
Her husband, Robert, served in the European Theater as the pilot of a P-51 Mustang. He flew hundreds of combat hours and was credited with shooting down five German planes. Klopotek, who named his plane "The Mad Pole," received the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other decorations.
After the war he operated an air charter service at the Municipal Airport and piloted Lullabye Furniture's plane.
On April 7, 1947, he was a passenger in a plane that took off from the Municipal Airport and crashed about two miles north of there, killing Klopotek and the pilot, a manufacturer's representative from Chicago who was apparently demonstrating the plane for him.
Klopotek was born at Custer, grew up in the town of Stockton and attended high school in Stevens Point. He left here with the National Guard when it was called into federal service in 1940, and later switched to the Army Air Corps, today's Air Force.
He was 26 when he died and is buried at Sacred Heart Cemetery, Polonia.
Robert and Charlotte (Dustin) Klopotek were the parents of a son, Terrill, four months old when his father died and now a resident of Coral Gables, Fla.