WWII veteran Walter Leonhart is counting down the days until June 22, when he hits the century mark. His birthday comes one month after he and his wife, Virginia “Ginny” Leonhart, celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary and about a month before Ginny marks a significant milestone of her own – she turns 95 in July.
HAYFIELD TOWNSHIP (Tribune News Service) — World War II veteran Walter Leonhart – everybody calls him Wally, he says – hasn’t been this excited about a birthday in quite some time.
“Seventeen days,” he said on Friday. “I’m on a countdown.”
Leonhart’s daughter, Rebecca Trobee, was well aware of the countdown clock.
“He’s got it down to how many days,” she said. “Pretty soon he’ll have the hours in there.”
Leonhart is counting down the days until June 22, when he hits the century mark. His birthday comes one month after he and his wife, Virginia “Ginny” Leonhart, celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary and about a month before Ginny marks a significant milestone of her own – she turns 95 in July.
“He doesn’t look like he’s 100,” daughter Rebecca said. “He’s pretty spry for his age.
“And he’s pretty proud of it,” she added.
When her parents venture out for a meal – “Mom likes to eat out,” Trobee said, “and after 77 years, I don’t blame her” – Wally will often quiz the servers, asking them how old they think he is.
“They never guess,” Trobee said.
They also likely couldn’t guess where he was 76 years ago today, 13 months after he and Ginny were married during a brief furlough before Wally was shipped overseas, first to Africa and from there to Italy, where he took part in the Allied forces’ Italian Campaign. Over the course of three and a half years as part of the 194th Field Artillery, Leonhart traveled from Naples to Rome and then north through Italy to France and Germany by the time World War II ended.
Leonhart wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing on June 6,1944, when 156,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in the D-Day assault.
“We were glad, anyhow,” Leonhart said of the news of the beginning of the Allies’ invasion of western Europe.
