The English historian Paul Johnson once wrote of Winston Churchill, “It is a joy to write his life, and to read about it.” So, too, is it with Richard Overton: another whiskey-loving, cigar-toting man of the Second World War, who passed away from pneumonia on Thursday, Dec. 27, in a facility near his home in Austin, Texas. At the tender age of 112 years and 230 days, Overton was America’s oldest surviving WWII veteran and the oldest man in the United States at the time of his death.
Overton volunteered for the Army in 1940 and served through 1945 as a member of the all-black 1887th Aviation Engineer Battalion. He arrived at Pearl Harbor shortly after the Japanese attack in December 1941 and fought in some of the Pacific Theater’s bloodiest campaigns, including at Angaur, Peleliu, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. Nevertheless, when asked, Overton discussed his service with the stoic dignity of a Greatest Generation patriot: “It wasn’t good,” he told filmmakers with National Geographic, “but we had to go.”
Overton’s postwar existence similarly marks him as a paragon of great American spirit. He first gained national prominence in 2013 when the then-107-year-old told Fox News he spent his time sitting on the porch of the east Austin home he built in 1945, smoking up to 12 cigars a day, and drinking whiskey with his morning coffee. “Whiskey’s a good medicine,” he explained, when asked about his impressive longevity. “It keeps your muscles tender.” In another interview, a 109-year-old Overton expressed his love for daily ice cream: “I eat ice cream every night. It makes me happy.”
Yet, he made clear that indulgences were not all that kept him going. Although he outlived his two wives and fellow veterans (he had no children), Overton still boasted of an abundant family — “the biggest family in Austin” — found in his church and local community. As a supercentenarian, he continued to find fulfillment in fellowship with friends and neighbors, church worship and attendance, and serving others, such as by driving local widows to services in his Ford F100 custom pickup truck.
“Richard Overton is an American icon and a Texas legend,” declared Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in a statement last week. Hear, hear, and Godspeed, joyful warrior.
