Clarance Taplin
, Wisconsin
June 28, 2026
Clarance Taplin passed away on June 29, 2026 at his Greenway Terrace apartment with family at his side. He was born in Evansville, WI on June 21, 1924 to Carl and Mary Taplin, youngest of their seven children. He grew up during the depression but thoroughly enjoyed his childhood swimming in a nearby lake, eating apples under the tree in his yard, riding his bike, hitchhiking to Madison to visit his sister, a nurse, who would treat him to a movie and maybe dinner before sending him home on the bus, helping his father who was a carpenter when he could and so on. He attended school in Evansville. His oldest brother, Earl, was an early aviator who built his own planes, had a flying school and inspired a lifelong love of airplanes in his youngest brother. When he was seventeen, shortly after Pearl Harbor, he joined the Navy (getting…