World War II POW, nonprofit founder

Irwin Stovroff served in World War II, spent 40 years with the same furniture company and found a new mission in his veterans’ service dog nonprofit.

Stovroff died Wednesday at Hospice by the Sea in Boca Raton. He was 95.

Starting Vets Helping Heroes in 2007 was “part of my flight plan,” he told graduates at Florida Atlantic University in a 2015 speech.

“I was in awe of him when I first met him,” said Charlie Morgenstein, executive director of Vets Helping Heroes and Stovroff’s lawyer.

The nonprofit organization provides assistance dogs for active and retired military veterans. Stovroff and his golden retriever Cash were familiar figures around Boca.

As a World War II bombardier with the 44th Bomb Group, 506th Bomb Squadron, Second Lt. Strovroff was liberated after 13 months in the Nazi’s Stalag Luft I. His plane was shot down on his 35th combat mission.

He never talked about his war experiences until he started the nonprofit in 2007, said his longtime companion Doris Tamarkin.

“He had this wonderful life and he wanted to give back, so he went to the VA [Veterans Administration] in West Palm Beach, and he was getting pensions for servicemen,” Tamarkin said. “Then the VA came to him and said they had a need for servicemen to get dogs.”

Stovroff credited a former neighbor from Buffalo, N.Y., with helping him survive the war. The neighbor had returned to Germany and was a guard at the camp.

In 2000, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., presented him with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Stovroff received the French Legion of Honor in 2008 and a Purple Heart.

His war experiences were chronicled in “Bagels Over Berlin,” a documentary about Jewish veterans of the Army Air Corps. He told his story in the lecture series at the 2016 Festival of the Art BOCA.

Stovroff also volunteered at the Wings of Freedom Tour of vintage airplanes every year at Boca Raton Airport.

"We tell people, in no uncertain terms, what they're looking at truly is history," he said in 2015.

He spent his career in sales, retiring at age 75 after 40 years with Thomasville Furniture.

With his wife Sterra, Stovroff moved to Boca West Country Club more than 30 years ago. He still spent summers in Youngstown, Ohio, where they had lived, said Tamarkin.

Stovroff was the graduation speaker at an April 2015 commencement at Florida Atlantic University.

Survivors include his daughter Susan Strella and her husband Michael. He was predeceased by his wife and a daughter.

Services will be private.

mshatzman@sun-sentinel .com, Visit our Boca Raton community page at facebook.com /SunSentinelBocaRaton.