So just how did a Kincaid farm boy of Croatian descent end up with a Congressional Gold Medal for serving in what had been an all-Puerto Rican U.S. Army regiment during the Korean War?

Much like how Ivan Maras of Rochester ended up teaching school for 35 years when he set out to be a farmer. It just happened that way.

Maras was a student at what is now Illinois State University in 1952 when the Korean War got in the way of his plans to continue on the family farm near Bulpitt.

“The draft board let me finish college, and I decided to let them draft me instead of signing up for four years,” Maras said. “I thought that having a college education maybe would keep me in the States, get me a desk job.”

Instead, Maras was shipped overseas. When he had a stopover in Japan, he thought he might be stationed there. But he went to Korea as a member of the infantry and was handed a rifle.

He was made a member of the 65th Infantry Regiment, created by Congress in 1898 as an all-Puerto Rican segregated unit that would become known as the Borinqueneers. Much like the Tuskegee Airmen, the Borinqueneers — after the original native name for the island, Borinquen — overcame bias and served the United States in World War I, World War II and the Korean War.

“It was all new to me — a shocking experience,” said Maras, who didn’t know a word of Spanish.

From soldier to teacher

For most of the Korean War, the 65th remained a segregated group. But toward the end of the war, in the fall and winter of 1952-53, the young Puerto Rican draftees weren’t as well-trained as they had been, Maras said.

Poor leadership, the language barrier and a noncommissioned officer shortage combined to influence some of the regiment not to fight, and 95 soldiers ended up being court-martialed.

“They started integrating to fill the regiment,” Maras said. Although still on the front lines, Maras was assigned to Headquarters Company and kept records and other paperwork.

He was surrounded by Puerto Ricans, who knew little or no English.

“I don’t remember anybody from the States,” Maras said.

Maras worked in the Headquarters Company until the end of the war in July 1953. Then, due to his college degree and teaching credentials, he spent the rest of his tour of enlistment teaching Puerto Rican students math and other courses at a make-shift school called a “tent school” that the military established in Korea.

“Some of these guys could barely read or write,” he said. “That was finally when my college degree paid off. We’d have a morning group, then another in the afternoon."

Maras taught basic reading, writing and math.

“That was the best teaching I had,” he said.

“The last two months of the war, fighting was really fierce,” Maras said. “The Chinese knew the end of the war was coming, so they wanted to have as much land as they could when it ended. We were always above the 38th parallel."

Not going to miss it

The Army awarded points for being on the front lines, and Maras had accumulated enough points to go home after 12 months. But like Capt. Yossarian, he encountered Catch-22.

“They kept me for 16 months,” Maras said. “I hated the Army for years afterward.”

Before his Army service and before his years at ISU, Maras studied engineering at Eastern Illinois University. But he wanted to be a farmer.

“I applied to Normal (Illinois State Normal University, the previous name of ISU), but they told me I couldn’t take agriculture unless I was going to be a teacher,” he said. “So I lied about that.”

After Korea, the principal at Kincaid High School asked him to teach and he figured he’d do that for a couple of years and farm part time. But his first year there, he met the school secretary, Lorene, and she became his wife the following year.

“They told us that one of us would have to leave after that,” he said. “Edinburg needed a second-grade teacher, so I spent two years doing that before I came to Springfield.”

He taught physics, chemistry and math at various schools throughout the district before retiring in 1988.

Along the way, he got his master’s degree in chemistry at Illinois Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in administration, which he’s never used.

After Korea, Maras came home to work and didn’t get involved with the Army again until 1993 when he went to the Veterans Administration in Tennessee, where he and Lorene had retired, because of hearing problems. They later returned to the Springfield area because of the city’s heart doctors.

“They checked me out,” he said of the VA in Tennessee. “They treat the veterans nice in Tennessee. I get new hearing aids every three years.”

But about that Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award that Congress can bestow.

“I knew President Obama had signed a bill (recognizing the service of the 65th) in 2014, but I hadn’t heard anything more about it,” Maras said. “On April 1, I got a letter from Florida, in Spanish. I took it to Rochester High School to have somebody tell me what it said.”

The letter invited Maras to join a group of five other Borinqueneers who had gone to Chicago to work after the war.

“I was going to go by myself until I got that letter,” he said. “I wasn’t going to miss it.”

Hugs 'for what you did'

“The signing ceremony served to underscore a broader point, namely that for generations, from World War I almost a century ago to Afghanistan today, U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico have built a rich and distinguished record of military service,” said Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, a non-voting delegate in Congress. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States.

“The Congressional Gold Medal that this will bestow on their unit is a small token of appreciation from our nation for their service, their bravery and their role in ending racial stereotypes,” said New York congressman Jose Serrano at the 2014 bill-signing ceremony.

Maras said about 300 veterans from the States were invited to the April 13 ceremony and a banquet at the Smithsonian.

“Everything was quick,” he said. “So many were dying off, and they wanted the ceremony before they lost too many more. It’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me.”

Southwest Airlines furnished Maras’ ticket, and provided hotel accommodations and tours when they got to Washington.

Maras went back to Korea in the 1980s.

“All these years, nobody gave you any credit,” he said. “But those people would see you on the street and come up and hug you for what you did for them.”

'Pretty outstanding'

Then five years ago, Maras decided to go to Puerto Rico, where the 65th is now a National Guard regiment.

He went to Camp Lincoln in Springfield and talked to the National Guard people here. That evening, he got a phone call from Puerto Rico inviting him there.

“They took us to where they train, and those mountains and hills were just like in Korea,” Maras said. The commander (Maj. Gen. Antonio Vincens-Gonzalez), who I got to meet, had them running those hills. You could tell they were well-trained.”

Then during the ceremony at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, Maras asked a Puerto Rican general in attendance if she knew Vincens-Gonzalez.

“She told me, he’s right over there in the crowd,” Maras said. “I got to talk to him again, and he remembered me.”

Maras said receiving the Congressional Gold Medal “is pretty outstanding.”

“I’m happy with the Army now,” he said. “After all these years. The last five to 10 years, veterans have been recognized, and it’s really nice.”

-- Contact Chris Dettro: chris,dettro@sj-r.com, 788-1510, twitter.com/ChrisDettroSJR.