His name is Frank Buckles, and he was profiled yesterday in The New York Times:
By any conceivable measure, Frank Buckles has led an extraordinary life. Born on a farm in Missouri in February 1901, he saw his first automobile in his hometown in 1905, and his first airplane at the Illinois State Fair in 1907. At 15 he moved on his own to Oklahoma and went to work in a bank; in the 1940s, he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. When he returned to the United States, he married, had a daughter and bought a farm near Charles Town, W. Va., where he lives to this day. He drove a tractor until he was 104.
But even more significant than the remarkable details of Mr. Buckles’s life is what he represents: Of the two million soldiers the United States sent to France in World War I, he is the only one left.
(…)
It’s hard for anyone, I imagine, to say for certain what it is that we will lose when Frank Buckles dies. It’s not that World War I will then become history; it’s been history for a long time now. But it will become a different kind of history, the kind we can’t quite touch anymore, the kind that will, from that point on, always be just beyond our grasp somehow. We can’t stop that from happening. But we should, at least, take notice of it.
Go read the whole thing.
H/T: Vodkapundit
November 13th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
It is not only that we will one day lose the last living soldier of WWI, but we will lose a great person of knowledge regarding life. A person that believes in work, family and honor. I will not forget the time that I offered to help him down a few steps at my brothers wedding (he married Mr. Buckles only daughter) and Mr. Buckles politely pulled his arm away and said, “I can do it, but thank you young man”. A true piece of history still stands before us….what an honor it is to know him.