My friend Larry died last night. He was 103. He died in his own home, asleep on his couch. He was the last World War II veteran I’ll ever know.
Larry (Lorenzo) was born in East Los Angeles in 1920. His parents had immigrated from Mexico just a year or two before to escape the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. Spanish was his first language, and he spoke English with an accent all his life.
My wife and I met Larry 17 years ago, when we began swing dancing to fill the void of being “empty nesters” after our youngest went off to college. Larry was a fixture at the Oxford, a local saloon on First Street in our little town. Every other Sunday night a swing band plays there and people come to listen and dance. We had seen Larry there for many years before, but it wasn’t until we started dancing there regularly that we got to know him. My wife became his favorite dance partner. He’d get a little jealous if she danced with too many others. Except me.
Larry loved to dance. He grew up in Southern California during the Swing Era. The stories he could tell! Dancing to all the big bands – Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, Benny Goodman. Duke Ellington. Dancing with big band vocalists and Hollywood starlets – Helen Forrest and Marilyn Monroe he often mentioned. Trips to Catalina to dance on the big dance floor at the Catalina Casino. He had a job for a time at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Bob Hope taught him how to soft shoe, he said, and he claimed Gene Kelly showed him some steps.
He could tap dance, even into his 90’s. He was an accomplished trumpet player, good enough that Harry James offered him a job in his big band. Larry wasn’t 21 yet, so he couldn’t take it. After the war he played with Tito Puente’s band for a time. When we first knew him, he could still play a little, though his lip and his diaphragm were losing their strength in his mid-80s.
Larry was an old school gentleman. He wore a tie to the Oxford until it became too difficult for him to tie one (He lived alone for his last 12 years, after his only son died of cancer). He often lamented how casual people dressed these days. “Back in my day, we knew how to dress! You dressed up when you went out.” He wasn’t shy about his opinions, or about anything for that matter. He could be cantankerous and judgmental, often to a dance partner who wasn’t measuring up to his standards.
And what a flirt! He was always talking up the waitresses, and any other pretty women who might be in the Oxford that night. When I’d drive him home afterwards, he’d often say, “She’s really nice. Man, if I was 30 years younger…” I never pointed out to him that even if he was 50 years younger, he’d still be twice her age. It didn’t matter to Larry. One time about ten years ago, on a plane back from California, Larry asked the flight attendants in the back of the plane if any of them danced, and soon he was “dancing with the stewardesses” as he put it. “Man, I think one of them liked me. If I was only 30 years younger…”
Larry was almost certainly the last World War II veteran I’ll ever know. He went into “the service” in 1942. He was in the Army, but after basic training he got an opportunity to go to aerial gunnery school. He, like many of his generation, was in love with the idea of flying, and so he was transferred to the Army Air Corps and became a waist gunner on a B-17. He went overseas in 1943 and was badly wounded over Germany in 1944. He came home on a hospital ship and was in a military hospital for almost a year. That’s all he really would ever tell me about it. The one time I tried to press him on it he teared up and said, “I don’t like to talk about it.”
He met his wife during his convalescence. They lived in Southern California after the war. “California was a Paradise. A Paradise in those days!” he’d say. But in the 1960s they moved to Washington State when he took a job with Boeing. After that he worked for 20 years for the State of Washington as a prison guard. He retired at age 62 and drew a state pension for 41 years. His wife died many years ago, before we met him. She must have been a wonderful woman:” Oh, I had a great wife,” he’d say. “She took care of all the money, the house. Everything I have is because of her.” Their only son, Bill, died of cancer at age 55. He had no grandchildren. But he had so many friends. At his 103rd birthday party last week his house was filled with people, from his church, his neighbors, his dance friends, people he’d met on the street and befriended over the years. People of every age. Larry truly never met a stranger.
Here's to you, Larry. And to all the World War II veterans. There were 15 million of you. Now there are a handful. When I was a boy they were everywhere – my dad, my uncles, teachers, the school principal, Ace the barber who cut my hair, Andy who owned the Texaco service station down the street, the guy who owned the hardware store. All gone now. It’s hard to believe. Rest in peace, Larry. The last of the Greatest Generation.
