IN MEMORIAM 2026
RONALD L. LEDWITZ '55
Lt. Colonel Ledwitz recalls his youth in Depression-Era Long Branch.
The Depression was a very, very hard time, I remember. I remember there were times where there was no money in the house. Maybe a dime. And my father would eat on Monday and my mother would eat on Tuesday. But us kids always ate. And he was a pretty good card player. And he would play cards at the Elks. And if he won a buck we'd use it for food. I don't really think he really ever lost. But it was a time when there was absolutely no money. And I don't know whether people can understand that. And it was sort of like the barter system. If you needed a toilet fixed or you needed a sink fixed, my father would fix it and then the shoemaker would give us a pair of shoes. Or we'd go to the grocery store and we'd get a loaf of bread. But it was a wondrous time. It was a time where you didn't have to worry about locking your door. And Long Branch, New Jersey was a wonderful, wonderful community to live in.
PETER LINDENFELD, RU FACULTY
Professor Lindenfeld recounts his flight from Europe with his mother in 1938, immediately following the Nazi takeover of Austria.
"My mother left with me by plane for the short ride first to Venice and then to Trieste, where she had family. The family legend is that the rest of the people on the plane were sent back, and my mother's cousins bribed the people at the airport to make it possible for us to stay. I don't know if that really happened, but she was a very determined lady. I was thirteen. I knew what was going on, but I was not aggressive. I was simply doing whatever I had to do. It turned out I was sick and that it was tuberculosis. She found a committee that paid for my stay in a sanatorium in Switzerland, where I spent eight months. Later, we took a boat to Canada, docked in Montreal, spent four days and nights on a train and ended up in Vancouver. I lived there until 1948. For me, leaving Vienna was a liberation."
HARRY S. EVANS '47
Judge Evans recalls performing with the Rutgers Glee Club on the eve of America's entry into World War II.
"December 7, 1941, the Rutgers Glee Club had an appointment to sing at a concert. We were giving a concert down in Trenton and we were in the bus, in our full dress suit, white tie and tail, and the bus driver was listening to the radio and he heard about it and he announced to everybody what had happened. I thought to myself, 'What the Sam Hill is Pearl Harbor?' I had no idea. … They pointed out that we were now at war. … Nobody in the audience knew anything about the Pearl Harbor attack. They were already in their places, waiting for us. We marched in without saying anything about it and we gave our concert. At the end, Soup Walter arranged for a messenger to come in, hand him a piece of paper and he turned and told the audience about the attack on Pearl Harbor and said, 'We are now at war. We'll now sing the Star-Spangled Banner.' Oh, did that go over."
BART KLION '48
Mr. Klion recalls the impact of the war on his New York City teenaged world.
Certainly during the war, that was your duty. The war came and everyone did what they had to do. … Everybody did what they had to do. My mother collected all kinds of things. There was gas rationing. My father had a car, and there was gas rationing. I was an air raid messenger. The things that we did are mind boggling, really, even when you look back at it. I was a messenger, and my job was they'd have blackout drills twice a week. My friends and I would get on bicycles. We could get out of the house and not do homework, and two, we were able to stay up late on any night we wanted to because we were part of the civil defense. We'd drive up and down the streets delivering messages from one warden to another warden. Where were the wardens? They were on top of the roofs looking for German airplanes. It's mind boggling to think that we were concerned—this is pre‑jets—about planes coming over New York City. The hysteria was fantastic. Everybody was doing something. We rationed, we collected scrap, and everybody contributed in whatever way they could."
GLORIA DECKER
Ms. Decker gives an overview of her service in the US Women's Army Corps.
"I fixed my birth certificate to make me, like, twenty‑one or twenty. I was eighteen. They weren't taking the Air Force, so they took us into the Army. My mother didn't know I did it. She was heartbroken, but she accepted it. When we went down to Georgia for training, everything was strict. I wasn't used to being told what to do all the time. One time, I was supposed to wake the platoon and I overslept. I ran out with toilet paper in my hair, my uniform half open, my shoes untied, and the sergeant said, 'You're a disgrace to the Army.' I thought I was having a nervous breakdown one night—laughing and crying—and the girls gathered around me, sat with me all night, calmed me down. They were like sisters. That's when I grew up. I was only in for about a year, but I grew up in that year. I learned confidence. I learned that nobody is better than you, and you can handle things. I've always said everybody should go into the service for at least one year to learn respect, discipline, and how to cope."
HERBERT HERSH '54
Mr. Hersh remembers the impact of World War II on New Brunswick.
New Brunswick was a war town at the time. Soldiers used to come into our store in uniform. You could see that they were lonely and looking to talk to people. I remember going out to Camp Kilmer with family and friends, bringing stuff to the soldiers. I remember sitting on Monument Square and seeing soldiers just pass by and want to talk. My father volunteered in the State Guard and guarded the Raritan River Bridge. He went out on weekends and ended up getting pneumonia because of it. My contribution to the war effort was leading the war bond drive. We raised a lot of money. We bought a plane or an ambulance. We went down to McGuire Air Force Base. We all tried to get involved. It brought people together.
THOMAS ABBEY '49
Dr. Abbey discusses his US Army Air Force unit's mission of supplying and supporting GIs at the front.
I applied and enrolled in Rutgers in 1943 and was able to complete a half year when I realized the military was going to draft me. So, I joined the old Army Air Corps. That was on August 3rd of that year, of 1943, and served with them until May 25th of '46. In that period of time, they trained me to be a radio operator and take Morse code. I was attached to a squadron of C‑47 paratroop drop planes. The C‑47s, and wound up in Europe, although I never was in on any paratroop drops. The outfit I had primarily ferried gasoline and medical supplies forward to 'Georgie' Patton and his Third Army and took casualties back to a place outside of Paris where we were stationed. It was interesting—you get trained six months to be a radio operator and you get overseas and you're in radio silence, because you're in a plane that has no armor or any way of defending itself. We ferried five‑gallon cans of gasoline in the belly of those planes and brought wounded back on stretchers. You didn't think much about it at the time. You were young and you did what you were supposed to do. You just went about your business, because that's what the war required of you.
JOSEPH F. DE LUCCIA
Mr. De Luccia reflects on the experience of surviving combat with the US Army Air Forces Eighth Air Force over Europe.
You wake up in the morning and hope you're alive at the end of the day because that's what happens every day. The empty beds in the barracks, the empty seats in the mess hall, you did not dare make friends with other crews because they would not be there. I flew my fourth mission to Berlin and when I finished that mission, the three other crews that I started out with that I went overseas with, they did not survive the fourth mission. That's forty men. Only ten survived. It was a matter of survival every single day.
WALTER DZIALO
Mr. Dzialo gives an overview of his service in the US Army in the United States.
They drafted me. I was eighteen. Everybody between eighteen and about twenty-six, they were already in the service. … I was in training when they dropped the bomb. They announced during lunch that there was some kind of bomb dropped. A lot of people say they never should have dropped it, but in my case, they saved my life. If they didn't do it, they would have invaded Japan and there would have been thousands killed. … I trained at Fort Bragg and then went to Fort Sill, artillery school. We fired all kinds of guns. Four hundred rounds of ammunition. … One time they put me on KP. The shell blew up and killed the chief of section. The other guy got hit with shrapnel. I missed it by being on KP. That's how life changes.
AKIKO SEITELBACH
Ms. Seitelbach recalls the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
On the morning of August 9, 1945, I was working in the supply office of Mitsubishi Electrical Works in Nagasaki. I walked to the large picture window behind my boss. He said, 'Get away from the window.' I replied, 'Don't yell at me.' Then, the atomic bomb hit. The whole building was violently shaking. Just as I threw myself on the floor, the ceiling collapsed, but I was very lucky because it did not fall flat onto me. … When I reached the shelter, candles were lit and I could see the many people who had been injured. Their faces were covered in blood. A boy about fifteen had a deep cut on his neck. He said quietly, 'I'm going to die. I want my mother.' I held his hand. Then he was still, and he was gone.
CARL FLEMING '52
Mr. Fleming, a teenager in Hunterdon County, recalls signing up for the postwar Army of Occupation.
As I was in the post office, I saw this poster, you know, 'Uncle Sam wants you.' There was an Army guy there with stripes on his arm and I went over and I said, 'What's the story? What's going on?'… He said, 'Well, the war is just over, and we don't have anybody on occupation duty and we need soldiers and they have extended the GI Bill of Rights to the end of 1946.'… I said, 'Well, you mean I can go to college?' He says, 'Yeah.'… I went home and I said… 'If I don't go, I'm stuck here. I have no future. Where am I gonna go, where am I gonna get a job?'… My mother said, 'Your father got crippled by working for the Army, and they gave him twenty-six dollars a month. They're not gonna give you all that, that's all a big lie.'… I remember… saying, 'Well, I got to find a way.'… So I was seventeen on May 22nd, May 28th I graduated from high school, and June 6th I was sworn in.
ANDREW H. ESCHENFELDER '49
Dr. Eschenfelder recounts his time at Rutgers in the postwar GI Bill period.
"I came back from overseas in January 1946, and I was discharged in May. … I immediately applied to get back into Rutgers and was down to Rutgers in June for the summer quarter. I lived in Chi Psi Lodge from day one, even the first quarter before I went into the service, and then when I came back after the war, I went right back there again. Like many of the veterans, I wasn't there to fool around. We were determined and eager and very conscientious. We wanted to get our education done and get on with our lives. The GI Bill made that possible for people like me. There was no way I could have afforded that education otherwise. I switched into physics right away when I came back. The war had changed everything—radar, electronics, nuclear physics—and suddenly physics wasn't just an academic subject anymore. Rutgers had excellent faculty, many of whom had been involved in wartime research, and that made the classes especially exciting. I lived with the fraternity, studied hard, ran cross‑country, and wrote for the Targum. The veterans brought maturity back to campus. You could feel it in the classrooms and around the university. Rutgers gave me the foundation for everything that came later—graduate school, my career, and my life."
ROBERT W. PARET '49
General Paret describes carrying out bombing missions in the Republic F‑84 Thunderjet during the Korean War.
"We were primarily exposed to flak. That was our biggest enemy. When you dove on a target, you'd see all the black puffs and you knew those weren't going to hurt you, but you wondered where the next one was coming from. You had to concentrate on getting your sights on the target and pulling off in time. Target fixation was always a danger. I remember one mission where the number four man in my flight was hit by a MiG coming off a bomb run. He was hit near the wing root, but he managed to get back to Seoul and land. I flew one hundred missions in about a year. After that, you don't remember individual missions as much as the patterns--the weather, the flak, the tension."
THEODORE SYMANSKI
Mr. Symanski recalls his tour of combat duty as a US Marine Corps' tanker in the Korean War.
From April 1952 to June or July, when it ended in 1953, it was called the 'Outpost War.' … They would send a platoon of Marines out to an outpost and they were the first warning. If the Chinese happened to attack, they would be the first ones that would stop them. … We would go up in the firing position and, when there were a lot of Chinese coming, they had dugouts in the trenches and they would get in and we would fire the ninety millimeters at them. … Sometimes, they would overtake the outpost and the Marines would have to take their wounded and go back to the main line. Then, the next day or so, they'd go back and take it back from them. It was just a constant back-and-forth. … In fact, I think it was a Memorial Day when our sergeant got killed. He was a pretty good friend.
ALLEN HOWARD, RU FACULTY
Professor Howard recalls the formative factors of his high school years in the late 1950s.
"Even before I went to Wisconsin, I was very involved in political things, and at first, it was around anti‑war stuff, and I really tied that up with my Christian upbringing. So, even when I was in high school, I subscribed to anti‑war journals, and I was very involved in a sort of anti‑nuclear campaign. I just thought this was wrong, and, you know, just a very bad thing, and it was a frightening thing too for people, in those days. Then, very quickly, I had gotten involved in like civil rights‑oriented kinds of things. This is before I ever did anything connected with Africa, because I, again, this was a sense of justice. I read a lot of philosophy and a lot of theologians. There was a minister named G. Aubrey Young, a very progressive Presbyterian minister. His sermons were on ethical questions constantly, and he was also very involved in the Civil Rights Movement. That period shaped me profoundly."
C. ROY EPPS '70
Mr. Epps describes the atmosphere and activities of his early years leading the New Brunswick Urban League.
In 1967, when I started here, it was after the detention--they call it a 'riot.' I call it a 'disturbance.' The real riots were in Plainfield and Newark, in Detroit, places like that, where people actually lost their lives. Here it was a disturbance. A few windows were broken on George Street, but no one really was hurt. … As a result, then the Urban League received a little money, I think five hundred dollars or something, towards hiring their third person. Up until that point, there were only two people on the Urban League staff, believe it or not. … We used to have a group called the Black Steering Committee, which was formed of a number of black organizations. That was a progressive—some said radical; I say progressive--group that really took on a number of issues: welfare reform, housing, education definitely. So, we really were an organizing unit back in that time.
RICHARD BLUMSTEIN, '62
Colonel Blumstein describes his work in planning interdiction missions against the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
"My job was to brief the pilots before their missions. This was the worst year of the war you know. I was sent over there in 1968 when there was the Tet Offensive. Four days after I got there, the Vietcong tried to attack the base. Every night I would go into work, review the latest reports of traffic coming south. We had sensors that could detect trucks and they were very accurate. … I compared the reports to the photo imagery from reconnaissance aircraft to identify likely truck parks. I would take this information and select targets in Laos and brief the targets that they would strike the next day. It didn't take long to realize there was a pretty futile operation that the majority of the supply vehicles were getting through to the Vietcong."
DENNIS BRODKIN '65
Mr. Brodkin, a US Army Artillery officer, recalls the feeling of being a "short-timer" in Vietnam.
Of course, you knew your tour of duty was 365 days. The very first thing that you start is the countdown. If there was ever a stupid war and a stupid way to fight the war, Vietnam was it. We were mission-oriented. We were doing our duty. Forget your feelings about the war. You had your buddies. Everybody had a short timer's calendar. So the first one is 365 days and you color it in, countdown to spot number one. Then when you get under a hundred days, you're short, you're officially short. You got a short timer's calendar. You didn't do one day at a time because you might be out in the field for seven days, which was a great experience because you come back and knock off seven days. These are both my short timer's calendars. They still smell musty of Vietnam. We were counting down the time from the day we got there. Everybody did. It was the only way to keep your head straight.
MICHAEL AARON ROCKLAND, RU FACULTY
Professor Rockland recalls his first day as Assistant Dean at Douglass College.
"My first day on the job at Rutgers was January 20, 1969, the same day Richard Nixon became President. I was told, 'Don't worry about student government. Worry about the radicals,' and I was given the name of a young woman leader. She came into my office within an hour. She said, 'We should get out of here. They're probably bugging us.' We went out onto Antilles Field. She took out a joint and lit it and passed it to me. I'd never even seen marijuana before. After a few minutes, we were holding hands and skipping around the field, laughing. It was my introduction to contemporary America. From then on, I had entrée into the student world. I think I was more mistrusted by the administration than by the radicals."
JEROME AUMENTE, RU FACULTY
Professor Aumente recalls his initial interview with Founding Dean of Livingston College Dr. Ernest Lynton.
"Two hours later, I was convinced that I wanted to go to Livingston College, which was just opening in '69, and not go to Rutgers College to teach. He was really the founder of Livingston. He was a Renaissance man in every sense of the word. He was a physicist, but, yet, his knowledge spanned all the arts and sciences. He was extraordinarily devoted to creating a different kind of place, a socially‑sensitive place, an academically‑interesting place, an experimental place. The avenue in was a Division of Urban Planning and Community Development. At this point, '67‑'68, we had the riots and the civil disturbances, we had the assassination of Martin Luther King—everything was boiling. It was an important place to be if you were in a university and saying, 'How do we direct some of our resources toward dealing with these kinds of issues, and in a precise, kind of academic, literal way?'"
SATISH PUNJ
Mr. Punj, an Indian engineer working in Iran, discusses how he escaped following the outbreak of the 1979 Revolution via Iraq and Egypt.
Iraq was a friendly country and their border was next to each other. So, I called my general manager. I said, "Now, I want to be dropped at the border." So, he said, "Okay, I'll give you this thing," because the riots were taking [place]. They were killing people, non-Muslims, "I'll give you an ambulance, which will take you there safely." So, I went to the border. I had the visa almost [immediately], same day I had got the visa and all that. There was not a problem. So, when I went over there, there is a check post where you cross the border. There was nobody. They had fled. There were some guys going around playing with a football or something. So, I called them. I said, "Call your father." So, the father comes. He doesn't know English. So, I tell him, "Cross, cross--I want my passport to be stamped." He did not understand. He said, "Okay." He broke the lock and went inside. There were a lot of stamps. He said, "Agha," which is mister, "which one? Which stamp do you want?" So, I searched, because, there, it is written in their language as well as in English. So, I took out the stamp and I said, "This stamp." So, he took [it], he put the stamp [on]. [laughter] I said, "But, somebody has to sign it." He said, "I'll sign it. Okay, go."