The day will come, possibly in the next two decades, when the last survivor of the Greatest Generation passes away.
That is the realization that Harvey Shaw lives with every year as he watches the ranks of his fellow World War II veterans deplete.
Shaw, who lives in Newport Beach and served in three wars of the last century, has breakfast every week with a small circle of peers and occasionally visits elementary schools to talk about his experiences.
He asks the students if they want to hear about World War II, Korea or Vietnam, and they almost always choose the first one. He’s grateful for that.
“There’s a lot of stories out there that are just going to disappear if someone doesn’t record them,” Shaw, 84, said.
Today, America will observe the 54th Veterans Day since President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed the holiday in 1954. In honor of the holiday, the Daily Pilot interviewed five local residents who served in wars over the last century.
Harvey Shaw — World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War
Shaw has two prized mementos of World War II in his home in Santa Ana Heights.
One is the front page of a Laguna Beach community newspaper that printed his picture during the war, along with a story about how Shaw barely survived after his plane was shot down over Germany.
Shaw, a young gunner, had his wing damaged by ground fire, and the plane above his snapped a photo as he went down.
The Laguna Beach native never forgot the day his family wrote to tell him about his hometown fame — and the caption that read, “Brushes Death Over Nazi Target.”
“That picture was on the front page on the newspaper stand at the drugstore,” Shaw said. “My sister worked for an accountant downtown, and she had to go from one customer to another, and she stopped by and she saw that picture. The first thing she saw was ‘Death’ in the headline, and it scared the wits out of her.”
The second memento is the leather flight jacket that Shaw is wearing in the newspaper photo — and which he went on to take with him to Korea and Vietnam.
The jacket has faded and cracked with age, but it still shows Shaw’s wartime nickname, Asbury, lettered on the front, as well as the painting of a seductive blond woman that he did on the back.
The Smithsonian Institution, Shaw said, has expressed interest in displaying the jacket.
