Bernie Regan, a World War II veteran, made a little bit of history on Friday, becoming the first resident of the American House Bluewater Bay senior-living community to celebrate a 100th birthday at the facility in its five years in existence.
BLUEWATER BAY — Bernie Regan made a little bit of local history on Friday, becoming the first resident of the American House Bluewater Bay senior-living community to celebrate a 100th birthday at the facility in its five years in existence.
“I’m the old guy,” Regan deadpanned before he entered a party where dozens of family, friends and American House neighbors waited to celebrate the milestone birthday with him.
A couple of months from now, with his wife, Kay, Bernie Regan will reach another milestone — 76 years (that’s right, 76) — of marriage.
One of the secrets of that marital longevity, Kay Regan confided, is spending time together. When her husband took up golf early in their marriage, Kay Regan would accompany him around the course — not to play, but just to have the chance for a walk with him, she said.
As impressive as those two numbers — 100 and 76 — are in helping to define Bernie Regan’s life, they aren’t the only digits that help define who he has become. And with Veterans Day coming up, it’s worth taking a look at a couple of other markers of his years.
There is, for instance, the number 150, representing the missions he flew as an Army Air Corps and Air Force pilot. Then there’s the number 24, representing the number of different types of aircraft he flew during a military career that included both World War II and Vietnam. And finally, there’s the number 2, which one of Regan’s sons, Mike, reckons as the thickness of his father’s military flight logbook.
“He went from Stearmans (single-engine training aircraft) to jets,” Mike Regan said during Friday’s birthday party, which was complete with lots of cake and love and laughter.
Regan enlisted in the Army in 1942, relatively early in World War II, while he was a self-described “smart-aleck college boy” at Central Michigan University.
“I was graduating anyway,” he said, “and I didn’t have any immediate plans.”
Regan entered the aviation cadet program, he said, at least in part because he was concerned that waiting to be drafted would mean an infantry assignment.
Regan had initially wanted to fly fighter planes, but a certain issue with his physique meant that he wound up piloting a B-26 bomber during the war.
“When they built (fighter plane) cockpits, they didn’t have me in mind,” said Regan, who still stands tall all these years later.
“My helmet was always rubbing on the canopy,” Regan continued, prompting him to seek a change of assignment to bombers.
He headed overseas in 1944, shortly after he and Kay, whom he had met while she was a high school student in their native Saginaw, Michigan, were married.
Co-piloting a B-26, with sealed orders that the crew could not open until they had passed Puerto Rico, Regan and his fellow aircrew members flew up the west coast of Africa and into Europe.
They wound up playing a critical role in the run-up to D-Day, the massive Allied invasion of the French coast at Normandy on June 6, 1944 that turned the tide of war in Europe against Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany.
Their job as part of the 391st Bombardment Group, Regan explained, was to bomb roads and other critical infrastructure in France in advance of D-Day, to slow German troops.
“We did pretty good,” he smiled.
Like most of his fellow World War II veterans, Regan chafes a little at the “Greatest Generation” tag that has come to be applied to those who served in that era.
Instead, Regan prefers to think about the people who served on the home front — like his wife, who worked in a defense plant — to keep American troops well-supplied.
I often think of what the people did back home,” he said. “They gave us what we needed to do the job. They deserve a good part of the credit.”
Regan would go on to a military career, interrupted by some time working in the private sector, that included six years of service at the Pentagon, a flight command at the former Otis Air Force Base, and perhaps most notably, some joint service — sort of, anyway — with one of his sons, Mike, during the Vietnam era.
At that time, Bernie Regan was working in logistics in Vietnam, while Mike was serving stateside in the Navy.
“I was just a young kid,” Mike Regan said, “and he was a seasoned veteran.”
Still, his father’s military service imparted some important lessons to him, Mike Regan said.
“I think the biggest thing is love of country,” he said shortly after raising a glass to his father and offering a toast telling him, “You exemplify everything that I hold dear.”
And while she clearly is proud of her husband, Kay Regan, who herself is 96 years old, was perhaps not as impressed as others with the milestone her husband reached on Friday.
“I’m getting old right along with him,” she quipped.
(Source: The Destin log- 9/11/2019)
https://www.thedestinlog.com/news/20191109/world-war-ii-bomber-pilot-celebrates-100th-birthday
