It’s old home week for Valley veterans
After more than a year in isolation, informal group is back to holding in-person gatherings
You can’t replace a handshake and a hug. If we learned anything about independence this past year, we learned that.
A little over a month ago, on Memorial Day, 60 older veterans who self-quarantined in their Valley homes and apartments for over a year finally got to see each other in the flesh again.
It was like old home week, said Ed Reynolds, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who had set up weekly Zoom meetings for some of them to stay in touch. Ed’s a tech savvy guy, but trying to teach the typewriter generation how to Zoom on a computer they can barely operate was a challenge, but most of them learned.
Now, they were back in the same room, shaking hands, hugging and back slapping each other — carrying on like it was one, big, family reunion, which it was.
“So many characters with so many stories to tell,” is the way Ed put it.
Many of the vets had been meeting for more than 15 years every Monday morning at a Wendy’s in West Hills for a cup of coffee and a few hours of camaraderie.
They remember the group’s co-founder, Fred “Crash” Blechman, a Navy Corsair pilot who earned his nickname for crashing four fighter planes while never shooting down one on the other side.
They remember Ed “Bomber” Koscinski, who walked in one day and asked if he could join.
When Poland was captured, he was forced to become a German MIG pilot. He spent the war trying to shoot these guys down. Didn’t matter, he was a veteran. C’mon in.
“I would sit out in my car in the parking lot watching the guys arrive,” the late Art Sherman, a B-24 bombardier in World War II and former leader of the group, told me. “They’d get their walkers out of the trunk and slowly make their way across the parking lot. You could tell they were in pain.
“By the time they got to the door, though, they were already smiling. They knew what was waiting inside for them.”
Camaraderie, and the thing they needed most growing old, laughter. Many of these vets were widowers with sons and daughters who begged their lonely fathers to get out of the house and join the group. Don’t give up.
Others had wives who couldn’t stand to see their once vibrant husbands just sit in front of a TV from morning to night. They twisted their arms to go to one of the meetings, just to see how they’d like it. They loved it. So did their wives. They dropped their husbands off and went shopping for a few hours.
From half a dozen
World War II flyboys meeting for the first time over lunch in 2002, the group had grown to more than 100, encompassing every branch of service, and the spouses and children of its members, if they wanted to come to the meetings.
It’s a wonderful story, but the truth is, they’re only scratching the surface. There are thousands more older veterans sitting in their homes in the Valley today fighting the same enemy and losing — giving in to the loneliness and depression.
If you have a retired neighbor living alone or know someone who was in the service and might be battling their own demons, let them know there’s a big, family reunion of veterans meeting every Monday morning and they’re welcome to join in.
They’ll be plenty of handshakes and hugs, and don’t worry about feeling out of place because you won’t be. That special bond veterans have of taking care of each other has no expiration date on it.
On Monday, a 45-minute film on the history of the Fourth of July will be shown. There’s a meet and greet from 8:30-9:30 a.m. then the meeting and film begins.
The group outgrew its space at Wendy’s and now meets in a former synagogue located on the El Camino High north campus, 7401 Shoup Ave. in West Hills. Parking is available in the school lot on Variel Avenue.
For more information, call Reynolds at 818-8844013.