Two centenarians from the area who died within recent months count among military veterans being remembered in various ways this Memorial Day weekend.
One stormed the beach at Normandy and participated in the Battle of the Bulge. The other served three years in the Pacific Theater before returning home to marry “the girl who was waiting for me.”
Both heroes are shining examples of the meaning of Memorial Day.
Dennis Boldt
Mankato resident Dennis Boldt was drafted into the Army when he was 18. He was 101 when he died May 15.
Boldt had been part of the D-Day invasion June 6, 1944, at Utah Beach in German-occupied France. His war experiences included participation in five major campaigns, including the Battle of the Bulge that following December and January.
In June 2024, he was one of the World War II vets invited to Europe for a D-Day 90-year anniversary commemoration. The Walk Among Heroes helped arrange for Boldt to shake hands with several dignitaries and actors. He spent time chatting with a descendant of Gen. Patton, who gifted Boldt with mementoes. Helen Patton gave him two dog tags, replicas of ones made for her grandfather.
Six months later, the same organization was host for an all-expense paid trip to Belgium, where Boldt joined in observances of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. During that visit, the country’s king and queen invited him to join them on a balcony overlooking a huge crowd of well-wishers.
Pat Martinson, one of Boldt’s seven children, was his escort for the trip. She was pleased by the respect and gratitude her father was shown. However, being able to witness his humble act at sites where soldiers who died in World War II battles are buried stands out among Martinson’s memories.
“We went to the big graveyard where the Americans are. Dad also stopped at German soldiers’ graves,” she said.
“’They were just boys, like me,’” Boldt had said.
Martinson observed times during the trip when her father’s emotions surfaced.
“I think it was PTSD or trauma,” she said.
After the end of the war and Boldt’s discharge from the military, he returned to Minnesota. He married and worked as a locksmith, later as a school custodian.
Boldt was a good storyteller and he enjoyed establishing friendships and helping people.
“I don’t know anyone who didn’t like Dennis,” said Diann Olson, a retired Mankato West High School math teacher, who first met Boldt in the school’s halls in the early 1970s when he was head custodian for the district.
She’d enlisted him more than once to change locks on her home.
Olson visited with her good friend a few months ago, shortly after he moved from his Blue Earth Street home to The Pillars in Mankato.
“He showed me an artillery shell (inactive) he kept on his nightstand. And he told me to come back and visit again,” Olson said.
She will be among those who gather to say goodbye to Boldt at his June 12 memorial service at Good Shepard Lutheran Church in North Mankato.
Paul Wojahn
Paul Wojahn, who died at age 104 on Dec. 14 in New Ulm, had attended school in Comfrey and the University of Minnesota before he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.
He served in the Pacific Theater from August 1942 to December 1945.
After he returned home from the war, he married “the girl who was waiting for me” and started farming. In 1958, he began his career as a state game warden.
When he retired in 1983, Wojahn spent lots of time fishing and volunteering for New Ulm’s local Disabled American Veterans chapter.
“He was a proud DAV member. He was always going to some type of a DAV gathering,” said Roy Janni, a fellow DAV member.
Janni and Wojahn volunteered together for their chapter’s clothing drive on South Valley Street. The nonprofit SAVERS pays the DAV chapter for sorting and bagging its donations. The income is used for building maintenance and to help pay for transportation services for veterans.
“We pack roughly 7,500 pounds into a load,” Wojahn said in a 2018 interview with The Free Press.
Janni said his friend also would ride along to drop off the loads at sites in the Twin Cities and Rochester. DAV members who volunteered over the years with Wojahn recall his physical strength despite his age.
“Paul would always try to put one more bag in a truck, sometimes it would be so full it would take three people to push the door shut,” Janni said.
In 2018, Wojahn was filmed by the FOX Sports’ “Scheel’s Hometown Heroes.” The show featured people — mostly vets — who quietly go about the business of serving their communities.
Janni said he last visited with Wojahn at a mid-December party celebrating the 100th anniversary of the DAV.
Giving back
Helping others and giving their time and energy back to their communities are common characteristics of veterans who served in World War II, observed Michael McLaughlin, Blue Earth County veterans service officer.
Surviving members of The Greatest Generation of soldiers are “few and far between,” McLaughlin said.
When asked if there are any military veterans who served in World War II living in the counties they represent, McLaughlin and Brown County Veterans Service Officer Greg Peterson couldn’t give definitive answers.
McLaughlin does not know of any living Blue Earth County resident who’d served during the war the United States entered in 1941. He does not have access to that data.
Veterans aren’t required to inform VSOs when they become new residents at area assisted living centers or if they plan to move out of state to be closer to family.