He stayed busy, and the war faded into the background.Īnd, for more than 70 years, that was where the war stayed. He met a young social worker, Alice Newman, and they married and started a family. He would go on to call this “the dark times,” and once told a grandnephew that he was “a mess” then.Įventually, he discovered his instinct for business. He would fly the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber, the lone occupant of an eight-ton weapon when fully loaded. He had never even been on an airplane, but he emerged in 1944 as a fighter pilot and was sent off to the Italian front to fight the Nazis. John Wenzel was 19 when he enlisted and was dispatched to flight school in Miami. The attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the United States and millions of its young men into uniform. 7, 1941, breaking news interrupted a game of bridge at Lafayette College, a liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. They brought them to their father, along with some typed notes he’d written at some point, as he began to finally speak about his time in the war. The nightmares sent his daughters back to those little rectangular boxes they had first seen at their grandmother’s. Finally, in 2023, living in Brooklyn and stooped and slowed by a broken hip, his 100th birthday approaching, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the stress he survived as a younger man. He retired and played a lot of golf until his aging body caught up with him. He worked his way up and eventually became president of the company. Wenzel had worked at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City before joining Ideal Corporation, which manufactured stainless steel hose clamps for automobiles and aircraft in East New York. The family lived in Sea Cliff, on Long Island.
Wenzel and his daughters on a journey back more than 70 years, to a time and a place he had worked purposely his entire adult life to leave behind, to World War II and the skies above Italy. Their father had always been so steady and predictable and was never prone to this sort of profound disquiet. His adult daughters, Emily and Abby, were also worried. He feared he had suffered a seizure, but his vital signs were normal. Since his wife, Alice, died more than 10 years earlier, he had settled into a quiet rhythm, alone with his jazz records and his painting.Īnd suddenly, out of nowhere, these nightmares. He would soon turn 99 and become the oldest resident there. John Wenzel, a veteran, automotive executive, father and grandfather, had recently moved into a senior living apartment in Brooklyn Heights, the Watermark on Clark Street, a new, frills-and-all building with a Manhattan skyline view. The nightmare shook the old man, who was now in his late 90s.
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