Our Whidbey Neighbors: From Oklahoma farm to rear admiral to ‘The Mole’

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 15, 2026

By HELEN BATES

Rear Adm. William J. McDaniel, M.D. (Ret.) has lived enough lives for several people. He has been an orthopedic surgeon, Navy flight surgeon, hospital commander, Olympic team physician, world-class wrestler, disaster response expert and even a contestant on the television show “The Mole.” Yet friends on Whidbey Island simply know him as Bill.

I count myself among those friends. I met Bill and his late wife, Shirley Blair McDaniel, nearly 20 years ago through the American Association of University Women on Whidbey Island. As fellow Oklahomans — “Okies,” as we like to say — we quickly formed a lasting friendship.

Bill’s remarkable journey began on Feb. 26, 1943, when he was born in his parents’ bed on a 120-acre farm near Muskogee, Oklahoma. The nation was at war, the Great Depression had only recently ended and few could have imagined the path that lay ahead for the farm boy who dreamed of becoming a doctor before he was old enough to attend school.

Because his father was a truck driver, the family lived in four states — Oklahoma, Washington, California and Idaho — and Bill attended 13 different schools. He began in a one-room schoolhouse where one teacher taught 26 students in grades one through eight.

But the precocious, high I.Q. lad excelled in his studies and, at age 5, he delighted in climbing a persimmon tree on the farm to read a book. He also knew at that ripe old age that he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. Luckily, in spite of moving so often, school subjects were not difficult for him, and he also excelled in sports, especially in wrestling and football. He won the state championship in wrestling in 1960, but sports were not his only talent. He also had — and still has — a beautiful singing voice and in high school he organized a men’s quartet that specialized in spirituals, which brought much attention to the many-talented young man and his friends.

After Bill graduated from high school in Blackwell, Oklahoma in 1960, he attended college at Oklahoma State University. He then entered the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, earning a doctor of medicine degree in 1968. He completed his internship in Tulsa, Oklahoma at St. Francis Hospital in 1969 and his residency at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California.

In 1969, Bill met and married Shirley Blair McDaniel, who was to be his wife for the next 50 years. They had one daughter who lives with her family in Montana. He was commissioned into the U.S. Navy Medical Corps and trained as a flight surgeon at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute in Pensacola, Florida.

Bill’s Navy career took him around the world, serving in Spain, Japan, Vietnam, Hawaii, Whidbey Island and Washington, D.C. Along the way he became commanding officer of Naval Hospital Oak Harbor, commander of Naval Medical Center Portsmouth and, in 1989, was promoted to rear admiral.

But all during his life in the Navy, Bill stayed true to his love of wrestling. He was the Navy wrestling champion from 1973 through 1977, the Inter-Service wrestling champion in 1975-1976 and the World Silver Medalist in the 1974 CISM Military World Games in Rome, Italy. He was the U.S. team physician for the 1984 Olympic Team and continued to be involved in the Olympics Medical Care through 2000. Throughout his Navy career, matches between Bill and his fellow staff members were occasionally held at medical centers he commanded.

Bill and Blair bought their home on Whidbey Island, just north of Oak Harbor in 1987. This would later become their retirement home and where Bill is now living.

His medals include a Defense Superior Service Medal, two Legion of Merit Awards, a Meritorious Award, a Joint Service Commendation Medal, an Army Commendation Medal, two National Defense Service Medals and a Humanitarian Service Medal.

After Bill retired in 1997, he served as Johns Hopkins University’s liaison to the federal government after the Sept. 11 attacks. His specialty is “mass disaster response,” which he says has had the most emotional impact on his life. In that capacity, he has helped in the medical relief efforts extended during the 2004 Indonesian Ocean tsunami that killed over 250,000 people, as well as during the aftermath of major earthquakes in Japan. Bill is the author of a book “Faces of the Tsunami,” which is based upon his work in Indonesia. Closer to home, he has assisted in New Orleans after Katrina, as well as in Haiti.

It is interesting to note that Bill and Blair were open to a variety of interests. While Blair was on the quiet side, she encouraged Bill in his many interests. In the 1970s, Bill was active in the Whidbey Playhouse. And playing up that side of Bill’s interests in the early 2000s, Blair told Bill that she saw where ABC television was looking for people to appear in a new show called “The Mole.” This appealed to the outgoing retired admiral, so they video recorded a program centered around Sherlock Holmes to show off Bill’s many talents. He was selected as the Mole during the show’s second season in 2002. That season was filmed in St. Moritz, Switzerland for two weeks and in northern Italy near Rome for five weeks. Bill said the cast became very close and they still hold yearly reunions every mid-July.

When Blair passed away in 2019, Bill was very much a part of her memorial service. Bill ended the service by singing the Broadway song, “My Cup Runneth Over.” There was not a dry eye in the audience. Bill still travels both nationally to visit friends and family, as well as internationally, especially to Ireland, the home of his ancestors.

Today, Bill still travels widely, visits family and friends, and returns often to Whidbey Island, where he enjoys regular dinners with longtime friends. For those of us fortunate enough to know him, perhaps Bill’s greatest accomplishment is that despite an extraordinary career, he has remained the same humble, generous friend.

Helen Bates, an Oak Harbor resident, is a writer of poetry, historical and general interest articles, a three-act play and restaurant reviews. Her writings have been published in the Tacoma News Tribune, The Seattle Times, the Eastern Washington University historical quarterly and local newspapers. She and her late husband, Ken, moved to Whidbey Island in 1994. They were active in a number of local activities and led senior cruises.