Tears, laughter, loss: Vets honored at retirement community
Edgewater at Boca Pointe home for 70 who served country.
BOCA RATON — Tears rolled down the cheeks of many residents of Edgewater at Boca Pointe retirement community Saturday as they recognized the 70 veterans who live among them — and those they lost since last Veteran’s Day.
The community’s veterans proudly stood as each branch of the U.S. military — all represented in the retirement community — was recognized: Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy and Marine Corps. Among the mostly male veterans stood 95-year-old Irene Zuckerman, one of the community’s only female veterans.
Zuckerman was 22 when she joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1944 during World War II. She enlisted a month before her then boyfriend, Sidney, joined the military, she said. The couple had a short courtship and married before he served two years in Japan.
“It was the kind of war that everyone wanted to join,” she said. “We all wanted to make sure Hitler was not around.”
Zuckerman, who was stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, still remembers some of the men she treated as a combat nurse and how serious their injuries were. It makes her cry to think about one young man, whom she remembers vividly. She said she stayed up all night tending to his abdominal wounds and trying to ease his unimaginable pain.
“I don’t think of myself as a hero,” Zuckerman said. “The boys I took care of were heroes.”
Zuckerman says she becomes teary-eyed whenever someone tells her “thank you for your service.”
The event drew about 200, many of whom donned red, white and blue clothing. A few of the veterans wore garrison caps. A slide show featured photos of the community’s veterans during the time they were enlisted.
There was laughter and tears as the veterans shared stories from their time in the service.
Bud Reeme, a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean War, said he gets close to tears “just thinking about our country and what a wonderful country it is.”