Flint college students plan trip to meet America's last living WW1
veteran
April 04, 2010, 12:00PM
![buckles.jpg](http://media.mlive.com/newsnow_impact/photo/bucklesjpg-d90a4607a10e0b55_large.jpg)
David J. DeJonge
America's last surviving WW1 veteran Frank Buckles in
his home in West Virginia.
FLINT, Michigan
— He keeps mostly to himself on a quiet, sprawling farm in West
Virginia where he just celebrated his 109th birthday.
He still does sit-ups,
uses a magnifier to read treasured books and rode a tractor until he
was 104.
And every year,
hundreds of visitors knock on Frank
Buckles’ door simply to meet America’s last surviving WW1 veteran.
Now four local college
students — two of whom served in Iraq — plan to make the 1,000-mile,
16-hour journey round-trip to visit Buckles just for a day.
Their mission: To say
thank you.
“He’s a living piece
of history,” said University of Michigan-Flint student and Iraq veteran
Cameron Waites, 29, who is heading the trip at the end of this month.
“That fact that he is
still with us today says a lot about his strength and spirit. The older
these veterans are, the more urgent it seems that we thank them. It’s
the respectable thing to do.”
Waites and fellow
UM-Flint student and veteran Jeremy Glasstetter, along with their
girlfriends Nicole Terry and Anna Dutcher, are creating their own
history lesson and traveling to Buckles’ historic farm near Charles
Town, W.Va.
Of being the last
standing in history among millions of Americans who served in the Great
War, Buckles says on his Web site, “By fate I have become the last.”
“This entire planet
would be drastically different if he and others hadn’t done their part,”
said Waites, who served as an Army medic in Iraq as part of the surge
from April 2007 to June 2008. “People thank me when they find out I’m a
veteran. The more I’m on the receiving end of thank yous, the more I
want to thank somebody who really deserves it.
“Mr. Buckles just
seems like the epitome of the kind of person a veteran would be —
honorable and humble.”
The UM-Flint visitors
appear to be among Buckles’ youngest guests, excluding children who come
with parents or schools.
Most requests to meet
Buckles come from people 40 years old and over, said Buckles’ spokesman
David DeJonge, who is making a documentary about the vet.
“He’s modest and
patriotic and America and the world could not have asked for a better
ambassador to represent that generation,” DeJonge said. “He’s our last
witness and he takes that responsibility seriously. He wants this
generation to be remembered.”
Even though Buckles
has slowed down — no longer physically able to provide autographs,
getting tired more quickly and taking longer to recall some facts —he
still enjoys occasional visitors who usually meet with him in his
personal library, DeJonge said.
“He likes to hear
about people’s lives and where they’ve come from to visit him,” DeJonge
said. “He shares some stories. He just has an amazing will to live.”
The only subject
that’s off limits is the three years Buckles’ spent as a prisoner of
war. Buckles was a civilian shipping company worker in Manila,
Philippines when he was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and was taken
to a prison camp until his rescue in 1945.
Buckles, who lied
about his age so he could sneak into the Army at age 16, was not in
combat but his job driving the wounded in an ambulance back from the
front was considered very dangerous.
He has accidentally
become famous in the last decade. The only two other WW1 vets known to
be living are also 109 years old, including Choules Stanley, of
Australia and Britain’s Florence Green who served as a waitress.
Buckles has been
quoted in The Washington Post as saying the secret to his long life is
“Hope,” and “I never got in a hurry,” advising others that when “you
start to die... don’t.”
DeJonge said Buckles
still uses an exercise peddler everyday, remains passionate about books
and history, and as the honorary chairman of the World War I Memorial
Foundation, he is fighting for a WW1 memorial in Washington DC.
The UM-Flint group
plans to present Buckles with an appreciation gift and also learn from a
hero.
“As a veteran, it’s
important that we honor those vets who have gone before us,” said
Glasstetter, 35, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and who is the
national director of the Student Veterans of America. “Mr. Buckles
bridges the generational gap between millennial veterans and WW1
veterans.
“I would like to know
how his life has changed for the better because of his service and take
that message and try to live my life in a similar manner by being
grateful and taking nothing for granted.”