Posted on 01/31/2016 10:42:12 AM PST by beaversmom
By Peter Roper The Pueblo Chieftain
Published: January 28, 2016; Last modified: January 28, 2016 11:01PM
Elmer Melchi survived parachuting into Normandy on D-Day and he survived jumping into Holland in Operation Market Garden -- although a German soldier shot him when the young 82nd Airborne paratrooper tried to escape from a POW camp.
But death finally caught up with the tough 92-year-old veteran Thursday afternoon, taking him in his sleep at the Sangre de Cristo Hospice here. It was expected. Melchi had cancer and knew he was dying.
"My dad went for his last jump," said a tearful Garry Melchi, one of three sons and an Army veteran himself. "He told me today, 'I'm going.'"
Melchi's plight became news because his wife June -- the pretty English girl he married in 1945 -- is in the University Park Care Center with Alzheimer's disease. That care center doesn't have a care contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs, so when Melchi's family initially asked the VA for permission to send their father there for his final days, the first answer was a bureaucratic no.
Instead, the care center staff brought June to the hospice for a tender reunion with her husband last Wednesday. She didn’t know his name anymore, but it made her happy to be with him. They sang together, he held her hands, they kissed and Melchi told his sons how beautiful their mother was.
It was the last time they were together. By the time the VA had waived their rules for Melchi last Friday, he was too ill to be moved.
At the time, Garry Melchi said the battle to get his father moved was worth it, even if his father was too near death to be moved.
"Hopefully, this won't happen to the next guy," he said.
Arrangements for a memorial service will be announced later.
Fewer of them every day ...
Yep, sad to think about.
Fewer of them every day ...
Around 1,100 per day last I heard.
RIP and thank you, Sir.
Only about 700K remain of the ~16M who served. Losing them at almost 1.3K per day. Simple math is all but a few guarding Heaven — or elsewhere for a limited number — in a couple of years. My WWII Navy combat vet uncle in 2003, and my WWII Army combat vet father in 2011 (Christmas Eve). Both, with their wives, rest at ANC.
A similar story for my father in law who died ten years ago. He survived D-Day and ended his days on Earth with Alzheimer’s. He got the run around from the VA and he died in a private hospice. Ironically, a month later a happy birthday card for him from W and Laura Bush arrived in his mailbox.
God bless him.
And look at what we’ve done with the world they gave us.
we have let them down and we must restore what they fought to secure.
That’s pretty darned awesome.
Yes, if we are to do honor to their sacrifice.
Gettin' blurry-eyed reading this.
I know. It’s really touching.
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