Posted on 11/11/2010 9:01:13 AM PST by Deo volente
Frank Woodruff Buckles of Charles Town, W. Va., is 109 years old. To appreciate his lifespan consider that, at 10 years old, Frank would have known a great many people who had lived during the Civil War, concluded just 45 years before.
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Doesn’t look a day over 80!
According to the list on Wikipedia, he's the oldest surviving World War I veteran--he was born Feb. 1, 1901. There are only two others, an Englishwoman born Feb. 19, 1901, now living in King's Lynn, England, and an Englishman born March 3, 1901, now living in Perth, Australia.
There is also one Polish "World War I era" veteran, Jozef Kowalski, born Feb. 2, 1900, who served in the Polish-Soviet War and again in the September 1939 phase of WWII. They use the label "World War I era" for those who served after Nov. 11, 1918, but before the Treaty of Versailles, or in a conflict which is considered related to World War I.
Amazing how time relentlessly moves on.
I knew a few WWI vets and I know quite a few elderly people who actually knew Civil War vets and ex-slaves.
I think there are still several living children of Civil War veterans.
bump
A heartfelt THANK YOU sir for your service to our country. May G-d be with you and all our military personnel active and retired.
Harrison Tyler is a college professor and the grandson of John Tyler, 10th President of the US. That just blows my mind when you think how young our country really is that there are people directly related to people who knew our founders
I lived next door to a WW I vet when I was a kid, back in the day when older people weren’t SCARED to speak with kids and vice versa, and he was an interesting guy with a lot of stories.
If you visit the Cantigny museum in Illinois, you might come away thinking that WWII wasn’t WWII, but WWI, part II. WWII was largely a battle of machines; WWI was a meat grinder for soldiers. If you wonder why Europe seems so degenerate today, consider how many of the best were lost in WWI and WWII. Those wars cast a LONG shadow through time.
My Mom has a photo of her as a child standing next to her Great Uncle who served in the Civil War.
My grandfather died in Dec of 2000, just a couple months after his 100th birthday. His great-uncles served in the War between the States. When he talked of them it was with such an intimacy that I felt I knew them too.
My uncle who passed away back in 1985 was also born in 1901 and I remember him telling me a story about how he always wore a bandana around his neck as a child. One day while walking to school (this would have been around 1910) an old Sioux Indian grabbed the bandana off his neck and took it from him.
The next day, the Indian reappeared on the road and handed my uncle a beautiful beaded pouch in exchange for the bandana. My uncle said it was well known in the small community where he lived that this Sioux had fought Custer at the Little Big Horn.
What will they say about us?
I recall when I was 4 years old (1954) my father pointed out a man smoking a pipe on the porch of the local veteran’s home. He say the man was 105 years old and had fought in the Civil War. The man died later that year.
My great grandfather fought in the CW and my grandfather fought in WWI. I never met my great grandfather because he died 30 years before I was born but my grandfather rarely mentioned the Argonne forest where his unit confronted the Germans.
Time does indeed march on, but when I work out the number of generations of my family all the way back to the revolutionary war, it wasn’t that many. The USA has indeed been here for a very short time.
Poser, I am exactly the same age as you and three of my great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War, two for the North, and one for the South. I have seven four times great-grandfathers who fought in the Revolutionary War, one was a British soldier captured by Americans in 1777. He stayed here after his release in 1782. Another was at the Battle of Yorktown and saw Cornwallis surrender to Washington.
Wife's grandmother is 99. Her Grandfather was a Confederate vet. She has a couple of pictures of him, he was a tough-looking character.
Wonder what he'd think of his Great-Great-Granddaughter marrying a dammed Yankee?
“Harrison Tyler is a college professor and the grandson of John Tyler, 10th President of the US.”
I know an older woman whose father was born in 1859. I never considered when her grandfather was born.
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