San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
MOUNT SOLEDAD PLAQUE PLACED TO HONOR FOUR WWII VETERANS
Gathering organized after canceled trip during pandemic
Kiwanis clubs everywhere share a motto: “Serving the children of the world.” Saturday, one of San Diego’s branches spent a little time at the other end of the age spectrum, honoring four men in their 90s.
All are World War II vets, part of the ever-dwindling “Greatest Generation.” They are members of the Grantville-allied Gardens Kiwanis, too, and their colleagues in the club decided to recognize their service with a plaque at the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial.
The ceremony drew about 35 people.
“We just wanted to say thank you,” said Kathy Butterstein, club secretary, who organized the gathering after one of the vets, Jack Scott, 96, had a trip to the annual Dec. 7 Pearl Harbor remembrance in Hawaii canceled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scott, an electrician’s mate on the destroyer escort Maloy, served in the U.S. Navy, as did Gene Elmore, another of the honorees, who was a B-24 bomber pilot. Also recognized Saturday were two Army vets, John Peterson, a cartographer, and Dr. Byron Newman, a journalist for a military newspaper.
All four sat in the front row on folding chairs for the hourlong ceremony, held on a lawn near the wall where their plaque is mounted. It has their names, brief biographies, and this along the bottom: “Men of honor who served their country well in war and peace.”
The plaque joins about 5,200 others at the memorial, which dates to 1954 and pays tribute to men and women who have served in the armed forces since the nation’s founding.
Saturday’s event featured comments by Neil O’connell, president and CEO of the association that manages the memorial, who applauded the vets for “being part of something bigger than themselves,” a war that lasted six years, spanned much of the globe, and killed an estimated 60 million people.
The most touching part of the ceremony — judging by the number of attendees who stood up to take photos with their cellphones — came when the vets were surprised with handmade quilts.
“They put their lives on hold when freedom needed them,” Kay Lettington of the group Quilts of Valor told the crowd. She called each man forward in turn to receive a blanket, which was wrapped around his shoulders for a “quilted hug.” Many in the audience “oohed” and “aahed” at the gesture.
When the ceremony was over, Scott downplayed any suggestion that what he did during the war was special.
“There are fewer and fewer of us still around, so we get the attention,” he said, and then added that, because he’s hoping to live to age 108, “I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”
About 16 million Americans served in the war, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that about 250,000 are alive today. It projects that the last vet from the war will die in 2043.