YMCA manager gets 2nd chance to help aging veteran see World War II memorial

Sam Rea, whose father died before he could make trip to Washington, helps longtime Y resident Robert Friedrich realize dream

October 03, 2012|Dawn Turner Trice
  • World War II veteran Robert Friedrich lives at the Irving Park YMCA.
World War II veteran Robert Friedrich lives at the Irving Park YMCA. (Chris Walker, Tribune photo)

About eight years ago, Sam Rea planned to take his father to see the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. He thought the trip would be an opportunity to honor his dad, but also a chance to bond and get answers to questions he'd always wanted to ask.

Rea made the arrangements and bought the airplane tickets, but on the day before the trip his father fell ill and later died.

About four months ago, Rea started a new job as project manager for YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago. He was assigned to renovate the racquetball court at the Irving Park branch when he saw an older gentleman helping to build an office for a personal trainer.

"He was putting up drywall and taping it off," said Rea. "I asked somebody, 'Who is that guy?' And they said, 'Oh, that's Mr. Bob. He knows everything about this place because he's been here forever.'"

Rea and Mr. Bob, or Robert Friedrich, hit it off. Rea couldn't help but notice the similarities between his father and Friedrich. Both were born in 1922 and served in the war. Both were physically fit, worked well with their hands and had similar dispositions: They were quiet, reserved and appeared to be curmudgeons until you realized the bark was mostly for show.

Rea said there was something else. He learned that Friedrich had been diagnosed with the same illness that his father had, which gave Rea and Friedrich an added sense of urgency.

"I really wanted to take my dad to this memorial, and I felt bad that I couldn't," said Rea. "And Bob really wanted to go and never dreamed he'd make it. It was the perfect second chance."

Rea called Honor Flight Chicago, a nonprofit that raises money and flies area WWII vets to Washington for an extraordinary day, during which veterans are honored and thanked for their service.

The average age of the veterans is 88, and there's a lengthy waiting list. But Rea told the folks at Honor Flight Chicago that Friedrich couldn't wait.

Soon, Rea was once again making plans. But this time it was to escort Friedrich, who, unlike Rea's father, never married (though he proposed twice) or had children and has lived in a 14-by-14-foot room at the Irving Park YMCA since 1949, three years after returning home from the war.

I recently met Friedrich at the Y. An incredibly humble man, he told me that he was grateful to Rea and Honor Flight Chicago for an experience he'll never forget.

During the Sept. 12 trip, he shook hands with fellow veterans, many of whom are in wheelchairs because of age or war injuries. He posed for photographs and toured war memorials and monuments. He said he was treated like a war hero during a special ceremony with color guards, salutes and speeches.

"We got to visit the (National Air and Space Museum), and the first plane I saw was the Enola Gay," he said, referring to the B-29 that dropped the atom bomb on Japan. "I started to identify the other planes, because a lot of the men weren't from the Air Corps."

Friedrich was drafted by the Army in 1943 and stationed in Russia at one of the Air Corps' three bases.

"American pilots would load up in England, fly over Germany and drop bombs, and land at the air base in Russia," Friedrich said. "The American people didn't know we were in Russia at all until Life magazine published a story about it after the war."

He worked in special operations in electronics for the Army. Although he was never in combat, he experienced air raids, often crouched down in foxholes when the Germans bombed the air base.

After the air raids, he said, Russian patrols would come out to scout for German anti-personnel bombs, also called butterfly bombs, that hadn't detonated.

"The Russians sent women out ahead of them to search for the bombs," said Friedrich. "We watched the women get blown up. The Russians called themselves trying to help us, but they were sacrificing their women."

He said that by the time he left the military, he was "a wreck."

"Back then the only way to stay sane was to forget about all the death and destruction," Friedrich said. "In World War I, if you had (post traumatic stress syndrome), you were shell-shocked. But in World War II, it was called Section 8, and that meant you were nuts, and you didn't want to be nuts."

Back in Chicago, he threw himself into his work at Zenith Corp. He said that saved him, along with his life at the Y and his adopted family.

"We had a cafeteria that served the best prime rib, roast beef, chicken and dumplings and leg of lamb," Friedrich said. "We had a barber shop, a tailor, a billiard room, a library and a gentleman's lounge, where the men read."

Many of his neighbors were professional men, including a manager at Florsheim Shoes, who liked his living arrangements so much that he got permission to pay a contractor to knock down a wall to expand his room.

When Friedrich moved in, rent was $36 a month. Now it's about $398 dollars a month.

In such tight quarters, there's limited space, but he still makes room for photographs from the war and memorabilia from his recent trip, which ended in a hero's homecoming at Midway airport.

Rea said he never planned to accompany anyone to the memorial other than his father.

"I'm not a holy-roller type," he said. "But I felt it was almost (fate) that Bob was put in my life."