'He was my hero': Recalling the life and times of Joe George, a grizzled war veteran by the age of 20

Mar. 19—Christmas Eve, 1944, the English Channel.

More than 2, 000 American and British servicemen were shoulder-to-shoulder on the overloaded Leopoldville, a 500-foot, 11-ton, Belgian passenger liner reconfigured as a troop ship.

When the torpedo from the German U-boat hit, the top-heavy ship lurched.

Then, it began to sink, and collapse in on itself, at the same time.

At least 700 soldiers suddenly found themselves in frigid waters—and dire straits.

The Germans, as it turned out, were the least of their worries.

Many of those soldiers would drown, pulled under by the weight of their combat gear.

Some, ironically, would be crushed to death against the hull of the now-ruined Leopoldville and another Royal cruiser that homed in for a rescue.

And still others would succumb to the effects of hypothermia.

With his teeth chattering, Joe George, uninjured, was fished out and plopped onto the deck of a British patrol boat.

"Ya need help, Yank ?"

"No, " he said, still looking into the sea and its tumult of wailing, flailing shipmates.

"Don't worry about me. Worry about them."

He was 19 years old.

Greetings Family and friends of George, who died three weeks ago at the age of 98, weren't surprised by the unselfish nature—even in a wartime, worst-case scenario.

After all, they said, that's just how the son of Syrian immigrants who was born in Waynesburg, Pa., and made his life in Morgantown after the war, did his day-to-day.

George was 4 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929.

Like every one of that generation, his formative years were defined by the Depression.

He was the seventh of Michael and Susan Attiyah George's eight children, and he saw early on how hard his parents worked to carve out their purchase of the American Dream—Michael literally did that, as a coal miner—in the face of events on Wall Street far beyond their control.

If you gave your word, Michael and Susan stressed, that was it.

You were honor-bound.

That's what their son did in January of 1944, when he raised his hand to defend his country.

He was in his senior year at Waynesburg High when he got his draft notice.

"I was an American, and that was what you did when you got the call, " George told The Dominion Post in 2011.

Still, he was honest.

He couldn't help but show his famous gap-toothed smile, as he recalled reading the missive ordering him to the induction center.

"I thought the war would be over before I got into anything, " he said.

"I was a little wrong about that."

A lot wrong, as it turned out.

No war stories Just hours after his rescue from the English Channel, he was dug in, with a dry uniform and rifle barrel, white-hot.

George and his fellow Leopoldville survivors from U.S. Army's264th Regiment, 66th Infantry—those who were able to walk and shoulder a weapon—were whisked from the water to the battlefield, just hours later.

The 66th knocked back a heavy German attack at La Croix, in northwestern France, a battlefield victory that eventually helped tilt the grinding war in favor of the Allies.

That kid from Waynesburg, who suffered shrapnel wounds in the fighting, had to be honest about that one, also.

"I was scared and worried the whole time, " he said.

It's that honesty that most impresses Robert, the first of his five sons who is now a professor at Princeton University and known internationally for his teaching and writings on the Constitution, Catholicism and ethics in American life.

Joe George, Robert George said, didn't traffic in war stories or swagger.

"He showed me that you didn't have to be mean and aggressive to be brave and tough, " the professor said.

"He was humble. He was gentle."

The lives worth fighting for ...

After the war, Joe George came back home and studied public relations at WVU under the G.I. Bill.

He went to work for a Kentucky wine and spirits distributor and courted and married Catherine, a Morgantown girl.

George would found a number of successful businesses while he and Catherine raised their five boys in a comfortable wood-frame house in Star City.

When he did brag, it was on his boys.

Between the five, they collectively hold graduate degrees from Oxford, Yale, Harvard, the University of Chicago and Emory—to go with their undergraduate diplomas from Swarthmore, Earlham and Bowdoin.

As Robert George said, it was easy to achieve—when you grew up learning by example.

In 2010, it came time to brag on the patriarch.

Joe George and 13 other soldiers from the 66th were made Chevaliers (Knights) of the Legion of Honor in France. The country never forgot the debt of the Americans.

"Dad was proud when he got the medal, " Robert said.

Displaying it, though, was another story.

"We couldn't get him to wear it, " the son said.

"He'd always say, 'There are soldiers buried in Normandy who should have gotten this. I was just lucky.'"

Not that he didn't wear his uniform with its sergeant's stripes for special occasions.

On Memorial Day in 1949, he suited up and marched in the parade honoring soldiers in Mt. Morris, Pa., and he kept it up for a good 70 years or better.

"I'll go as long as my legs will take me, " he said as an 85-year-old in 2011.

This past March 8, Robert and his brothers were there to ease their dad's passage.

A private service followed last Thursday at the family cemetery in Mt. Morris. Plans are underway for a public gathering in the future.

Joe George's life and times, his eldest son said, make a for a true American chapter in the book of the Greatest Generation.

That includes immigrant families that watched their sons ship out to defend their new country.

And the daughters who marched off to the factories to become Rosie the Riveters.

"Look at what they did, " he said.

"My dad was my hero."

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