95-year-old veteran’s neighbors find unique way to honor him — and they’re not alone

There were 16 million Americans who served in World War II.

But today, as those men and women celebrate birthdays in their 80s, 90s or even 100s, there are fewer and fewer Americans who remember the war firsthand.

And there are even fewer Americans who actually fought in the war. In fact, only 558,000 Americans who served in WWII were alive in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

One of those half a million veterans is Harvey Djerf. He’s 95, and though he loves to amble around the tree-lined streets of his neighborhood in Plymouth, Minn. — “I feel better if I walk,” he says — he’s found it harder and harder to do these days, according to KARE.

Enter a group of intrepid neighbors, who have taken it upon themselves to provide a few rest stops along his twice-daily route. Every couple of houses, KARE reports, neighbors in the Minneapolis suburb have put a chair in their driveway or on their lawn for Djerf to sit, until he’s ready to get up and keep going.

“People saw me stopping and catching my breath,” Djerf tells KARE. “They figured maybe Harvey needs a place to rest.”

And Djerf’s neighbors are hardly alone in remembering the aging vets.

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, La., is trying to collect as many stories of those veterans as it can in a project they say is intended to honor veterans, according to the Associated Press.

The museum staff have spent the last year gathering more than 9,000 interviews with WWII veterans to include in a bank of oral histories.

“We have fewer personnel for oral history gathering, and the veterans we're getting have become more difficult to talk to,” Robert Citino, the museum's senior historian, told AP. “I don't think it's surprising that we have people who don't recall events with 100 percent accuracy. We're just dedicated to getting every oral history we can.”

Each day, according to the museum, 362 WWII veterans die, meaning that collecting stories to remember them is a race against time.

But elsewhere, in places like Plymouth and Oro Valley, Ariz., veterans who are getting a little older are inspiring random acts of kindness in everyday life.

Just last week, police officers in Oro Valley responded to a call about a man at the side of the road with a flat tire, according to KVOA.

When they arrived, they met 97-year-old Dick Bristol, a WWII veteran.

After they replaced his flat with a spare tire, they helped him get to a nearby tire store to get a permanent replacement. But when they arrived, the tire store told Briston that three of his tires needed replacing.

That’s when the officers decided to buy him all three, according to a Facebook post about the encounter.

“You don't meet WWII veterans very regularly,” Sergeant Mike Gracie, who helped buy the tires, told KVOA. “We can't repay people like that. The most we can hope for is to show some gratitude.”

This story was originally published October 17, 2017 at 10:14 PM with the headline "95-year-old veteran’s neighbors find unique way to honor him — and they’re not alone."