DROPPING IN ON THE VETERAN DOWN THE STREET

[Geee]

American Spectator:

few weeks ago, I dropped in on a fellow named Russ Post, an 89-year-old veteran of World War II and Korea, who just happens to live on my street. Another guy on our street, Deven, closer to my age, had been suggested I meet with Russ. We finally did. What followed was one of the more interesting and entertaining Saturday afternoons I’ve experienced in quite a while.

 

Russ took my teenage son and me on a roller-coaster ride from his youth in Western Pennsylvania to the Pacific theater to the Korea War, and rarely in a perfectly straight line. His vivid diversionary descriptions of some of his, shall we say, extra-curricular activities in the military and throughout his upbringing were rather raw, particularly his candidly expressed encounters with the opposite sex. That wasn’t what my son (who blushed) and I had come to hear, but it certainly made for a spirited conversation that easily kept our attention for two-plus hours. Not all the reminiscences seemed relevant or appropriate, but, hey, anyone who got shot up like Russ has earned the right to speak (and boast) as he pleases. It was his house and his life.

 

John Russell Post was born February 6, 1925, the product of a mother who lived to be 100 (and rode a horse ’til she was 97) and father who lived to 106. Long before we got to his humble beginnings, Russ was showing us photos and sharing stories about the Marine Corps in World War II. You would think that a smelly camp with a bunch of smelly guys would have little to do with pretty girls, but Russ quickly brandished a picture of Miss Pittsburgh, Betty Moska (not her maiden name, which Russ couldn’t recall), who had married one of his lucky buddies, Col. Herb Moska, after she left Grove City College and he left the military.