Howard Seitzer looked back on a lifetime of service Wednesday, filled with stories, as family and friends gathered to wish him a joyful 103rd birthday.
Seitzer flew air missions into Germany during World War II and later joined the St. Paul Fire Department.
All of his five living children were in attendance offering a slice of cake to anyone who stopped in at Oak Meadows Senior Living center in Oakdale to wish their dad joyful birthday.
The daddy of six wore a blue hat embroidered with the title “WW II Veteran.” He served within the eighth Air Force Division 379th Bombardment Group from 1944 to 1945 on B-17 heavy bombers.
“Well if I fought for the country I’d as well get a hat, too,” Seitzer said.
35 missions
He enlisted after working for Lockheed Martin in California making airplanes for the British military. His only request before leaving for basic training was to go home to St. Peter, Minn., first.
At Kimbolton base in England happening a mission was all the time a selection, he said. Some requested ground assignments.
But Seitzer kept saying yes.
“I wasn’t gonna quit once I began,” he said. He accomplished 35 missions.
The primary time German forces shot back he said he yelled, “What the hell am I doing here, I didn’t even need to be here.”
His division provided air support throughout the Battle of the Bulge. It was so foggy on the time planes were taking off by an assigned a time so that they they wouldn’t hit one another, he recalled. When Seitzer’s plane took off it hit a beacon pole which blew out one in every of the 4 engines. The B-17s couldn’t take off without all 4 engines but with a plane coming behind them and farmland in front of them the co-pilot bounced the plane and used open space to skim the bottom until they got to the best height.
Seitzer remembers being on a military base in Oklahoma when the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. It was his twenty fifth birthday and he has said it was his best present because he knew the war was finally over.
After the war
After the war he met his wife Virginia Bisch. He was together with his friend, Norb, and his girlfriend when Bisch walked by, he remembers. She happened to be Norb’s girlfriend’s sister so later Seitzer asked Norb to set him up along with her. They married in 1948.
Seitzer worked within the St. Paul Fire Department starting in 1949. When he wasn’t putting out fires he was constructing a house for his family on Dale Street. When the family outgrew that house he built one other one on Iowa Street.
The adventures continued for Seitzer and his family.
His children recall a visit to Canada years ago of their 1961 Chevy station wagon that towed a camper they call the “silver bullet.”
Because the family got here through customs, the officials working the border didn’t know concerning the blueberries. So many blueberries stuffed into any container that they may use. Pots, pans and upside-down hats sat within the “silver bullet” camper.
Seitzer had stopped at every blueberry field he could find and sent his six children out to choose berries.
“We almost got arrested,” said daughter Marilyn Freberg, laughing.
Son Jim added: “Yeah, we’re lucky.”
After he retired from the St. Paul Fire Department in 1978 Seitzer and his wife traveled the world square dancing.
His secret to a protracted life?
Never having smoked and “eating oysters each time I get the possibility,” he said.
