By Melanie Lekocevic
Capital Region Independent Media
CATSKILL — Greene County honored 103-year-old World War II veteran and Freehold resident Stanley Maltzman at this year’s Veteran of the Year ceremony on Saturday.
Maltzman, born on July 4, 1921, in the Bronx, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942.
“He still remembers that he was listening to a football game on the radio that December in 1941 when a special emergency message interrupted the broadcast announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor,” Maltzman’s daughter Carole Kavanagh told the audience at The Historic Catskill Point. “He tried to follow his neighborhood friends and enlist right away, but he discovered that he couldn’t because he wasn’t 21 yet. He finally convinced [his father] to sign his papers and in March 1942, he enlisted in the Coast Guard.”
After going through boot camp, Maltzman was sent to signal school where he learned the national code of signals, specializing in visual communications using blinker lights, handheld signal flags and hoisted flags, Kavanagh said.
Maltzman served on the USS Centaurus in the Pacific theater. The ship is credited with six invasions and downed two Kamikaze airplanes. Maltzman said he remembered the 160 prisoners of war the ship captured.
“They were very nice — they worked on board the ship and they loved the work they were doing. It was easy, it was no trouble,” Maltzman said. “When these Japanese prisoners were all sent on their way, I was waiting on the dock and believe it or not, the Japanese prisoners were whistling ‘Semper Paratus’ and they were smiling on the dock.”
“Semper Paratus” is the official song and march of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Joyce Barry, a retired nurse who met Maltzman at the VA, has been his companion for the past 17 years.
“Being a veteran has really changed Stanley’s life in many ways,” Barry said. “It’s wonderful to have people come up and thank him for his service and it’s so nice to hear. He served 22 months [on the Centaurus] through battles that earned the ship six Battle Stars, downed two Kamikazes and he made it home safe.”
Maltzman was honorably discharged from the Coast Guard on May 1, 1946. He returned home to the Bronx and married his childhood sweetheart, Rachel, in August of that year. He used the GI Bill to attend the Phoenix School of Art in New York City, which launched him into the next phase of his life — working as a commercial artist and raising his two daughters, Carole and Susan.
After retiring from the advertising industry, Maltzman and his wife moved to Freehold in Greene County, where he worked on his passion — fine art. He has been honored for his art by numerous organizations, including The Pastel Society of America and the National Arts Club in New York City. He has published three books: “Drawing Nature,” “Drawing Trees Step by Step” and “The Art of Stanley Maltzman.”