Joseph ‘Joe’ Mack sported a new hat on his 101st birthday: “Vintage 1924: Aged to Perfection.”
The veteran and great-grandfather looked back on his long life with his son, Dan, who joined him for a small party at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton on Saturday.
Mack served in the Army’s 66th Infantry Division during World War II. He remembers training at Camp Rucker in Alabama, and relieving the 94th Infantry Division on the west coast of France in 1944. Mack’s unit of “Panthermen” contained pockets of German resistance after the Allied advance, and it fought groups of militant Nazis who believed that the German retreat from France was only a temporary setback.
He never talked about the war with his family, but his children were later told that he worked as a linesman while stationed in France. The job involved laying radio wires to safeguard communication between the front lines and rear command posts.
After the war ended, Mack studied at Springfield College before earning his physical therapy certificate at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. He then took a job at Mercy Medical Center in Massachusetts, where he later became the head of a department.
Along the way, he met his wife Helen Marie, affectionately referred to as Ree. The couple had two sons, Dan and Mike.
Dan, now 74, has fond childhood memories with his father. He remembered how Mack used to transform their backyard into a barbershop, offering haircuts to all the neighborhood children. He stayed friends with the other families on the block for life, meeting up with them on vacation years after they moved away.
Mack also loved to golf and bowl, and he picked up gardening and woodworking during his retirement.
After Ree died in the late nineties, Mack met Phyllis Weintraub, and the two traveled the world together before her death in 2023. Destinations like Greece, Italy and Turkey gave way to cities across New England as the couple aged.
Today, Mack still enjoys reading and spending time outside. He loves root beer and chocolate milk. His family has grown to include four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
And though he may have been surprised by a banner and balloons in the Veterans Home, he wasn’t surprised to be turning 101.
“I had a feeling I’d make it,” he laughed.
Abby DiSalvo can be reached at adisalvo@cmonitor.com