InFocus featuring Robert Garabedian (Centenarian & WW2 Fighter Pilot)

From the 22 news plus studio This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of in focus. I'm your host patrick berry I had may have mentioned this to you in the in the past, but one of my life goals I've said this to my wife, you know my kids. I want to turn 100 years old I want to live to be 100 So i've i've always been looking for someone that I can talk to Who has already achieved that status and status and i'm so excited today because sitting across the desk from me is mr Robert garabedian. He is a centenarian born in 1924. Mr. Garabedian. Thank you So so very much for joining me today. I've been i've been really looking forward to uh to the to this conversation Well, i'm looking forward to it too patrick. I you know, it's fascinating To have this conversation because I I as much as I joke with my my kids, you know in my family You've actually lived 100 years And a few extra and a few extra and you're in really good shape for not bad. Yeah for nearly 102 years old so Did you ever think you'd live this long? Oh hell no To be honest with you, I thought I'd get killed during the war And which war the second world war second world war yeah, why did you think that Well, I was doing something that was pretty dangerous to do. Okay. I became a fighter pilot Wow, and I decided to become a fighter pilot Oh when I was about uh, 15 or 16 years old, okay. I uh Was a prolific reader as a young man And uh, I was following what was happening over in europe Quite a bit. Okay. So at 15 years old, that's roughly 1938 39 right? Okay when all the x when when when um, When you know hitler and the nazi was overrunning europe England started to stand alone all by itself, right? The only thing they had to defend themselves was fight about it Interesting and I was just enamored of their courage and their ability and what they were doing And I made up my mind at a pretty young age that I Would like to try to be a fighter pilot, you know, what fascinates me is if you think about the time So you're talking the late 1930s, right the wright brothers First flight was what? 25 years before that Like 1912 something like that 1917. Yeah somewhere in the teens, right? It was in the all of a sudden It was maybe almost 30 years Yeah, I hope that was something we had fighter pilots going from you know Kitty hawk to fighter pilots in a short period of time and fighter pilots didn't have a long lifespan, you know, right? But I hope to take more of them before they got me. Absolutely. Absolutely I want to come back to your your service to our country and your experience training to be a fighter pilot but I want to shift gears now to Life tell me where did where were you born? Where did you grow up? Well, I was born in boston I lived in south boston. I was born at St. Elizabeth hospital. Okay, which is quite a well-known hospital there in boston and I was living in south boston Which is now a great place to go It was a great place to go then but it was a tough place in those days There were gangs that were rampant in those days and they were pretty tough But it is a beautiful area of boston There's a lovely beach there that runs along The head house is there the the castle island was there It's a beautiful place to be you could go swim in there. They had a park and in those days The boston aquarium was right there at the end of my street. Oh, that is funny You could always go to the aquarium. Oh, we every day just about would be down in the park at the aquarium playing ball Ice skating in the winters swimming in the summer. It was a great place to be raised For a kid with no money. I didn't realize it. I was living as good a life as people with lots of money would live Absolutely. Yeah, so Growing up in in the boston area. When did you finally meet the love of your life? Oh, that was quite a few years later. Really? Yes. That was after the war. Okay Yeah, and a number of things had happened in between Skipping from one to the other I grew up a bit An insurance policy came to thousand dollars now You may say well If I really search in my pockets, I might be able to come up with a thousand back then $1,000 was a lot of money. Absolutely. Okay so My mother and father wanted to get out of southie into the country My father had been incurably ill for a number of years And we were trying to get him on the farm to help him a little bit So with that thousand that came due And a good reputation and some good friends We bought a home down in east bridgewater a little farm A farmhouse that went back over 100 years old a nice big barn Five acres of land. Wow. So when I was 15 years old We left Southie and went to east bridgewater, massachusetts Which is still a lovely town the city boy moves to the country and moved to the country and I loved it I loved it You went from playing in on the sidewalks and on the streets to knee-high grass. There you go And of course I lost my ocean beach, but we had a river Over at the next farm over where all us kids used to swim So we had a lot of good times out there well there I lived from about I think at about 38 or 39 Somewhere in there that we moved out there And then of course the war came along And I went from there into the service as did my only brother too and We both lived through the war come back home And my brother Got married. He was seven years older than me married ahead of me And he married and came and lived at the farmhouse By then my father had died. Okay. Okay Actually, he had died before I went in the service And that's part of what i'll tell you Because he had died And I was working at the shipyard by now as I was out of school high of high school Working at the shipyard and they offered to give me a deferment and I said, oh no I want to be a fighter pilot I'm going to interrupt you there because we need to take a quick break Okay, take a little sip of water and coffee and then we'll be right back after this stay with us This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry Hello everyone and welcome back to this edition, uh of in focus I'm, your host patrick berry sitting across the desk from me is a centenarian robert garabedian. Uh, mr Garabedian, thank you so very much for for coming to talk to me about life Living life Through more than 100 years. I I applaud you and i'm jealous of you Um before we went to break you started to talk about um, just about when you were heading into the into the service And you know, you moved to to what is it west bridgewater or east bridge Bridgewater and uh I was through high school And uh working at the shipyard at that time Well, my father had died Uh just recently And uh at that point in time not just recently now No, not at that point in time and uh Of course pro harbour came along on december the 7th and uh We heard it on the radio no tv in those days, you know And we heard it on the radio And uh, my brother who was seven years older than me Went down and enlisted on december 8th Wow, yeah, he enlisted in the navy and most of his gang used to be gangs in south boston Most of his gang enlisted at the same time as well So and you you had mentioned earlier that you wanted to be a pilot from about the age of 15 So when he enlisted you must have been very jealous Oh, I wanted to get in too. I tried to get in and I was only 17 years old Okay, I've heard a lot of people of that era faked their ages or whatever to get in Oh Well, I didn't try to fake anything, but I did go and try to enlist and they said no You wait a little while. Okay, we'll take you next year Well by the time next year come my father had died. Okay, and him and I were both working at the shipyard Okay So mother to take care of they offered me a deferment, you know working at the shipyard the only support of my mother My brother was in the service. I only had one brother And I said, oh no, no, I want to go I want to be a pilot So I went through the examination the physical and everything come out at the end and there's A marine there and there was a navy guy there and there was an army guy there So I talked to the marine guy a little bit said you know, you guys are doing great work and so forth and kind of interested and I said, you know Being interested. I want to be a pilot. He said oh no We don't train our own pilots The navy trains our pilots for us and so forth and you have to enlist in a special program Oh, okay Talk to the navy guy and he said oh no same kind of story Talk to the army guy I think he lied to me a little bit You want to be a pilot he's trying to fill his quota for the day, right You come on in and when you get up to fort devon You just tell them you want to be a pilot and they'll tell you what to do and how to do it. Wow Oh, I joined the army And they sent me up to fort devons When I got there I'm going through and I say I want to be a pilot, you know, I want You want to be a pilot Look young man You've got to go through all our physicals and pass our stuff Then you have to have an iq of above 110 Then we'll let you take the exams and then you take a special Flying physical to see if you can start to train to be a pilot Oh well Life went on and I did all of those things So But you did you ever so you went through you went to the fighter pilot training you did all the right steps pilot training Pilot training so and then you learn to become a fighter pilot through that. Yes. Okay Then what happened? Did you? Did you I Trained and became a pilot up my wings, which i'm very proud of to this day Not everyone gets them, you know, right? and I uh Was training at first in p40 Which is the war hawk you might know the p40 Patrick it was a plane that had that shark smug painted on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was very popular plane But it was getting old as the war was going on So I turned to that and then I got assigned to the p47 which was really a powerful Magnificent plane, right? It had a platten whitney engine in it and it had a hamilton standard propellers on it and it had 8 50 caliber machine guns in the way And we could carry a lot of damage It was a flying tank It really was a very powerful Very fast with a great engine and a pratt and whitney engine and I think it was I think it was 18 cylinders Double roll. Okay air cool It was a hell of a plane Sounds like it certainly sounds like it. Yeah, but you So you went through all this training, but you I went through all this training getting prepared Now while i'm in this training the germans finally gave up. Okay which is From my view playing too bad because I was hoping to join the ninth air force. They were doing fighter bombers Right. Okay is what they were. They were supporting the troops And really helping the troops to move forward and they were doing a great job and I That's what I wanted to do and then but the war ended before you got well Then when they gave up then every everything switched over to getting ready for the pacific We're ready to go to the pacific You know what happened patrick? Now this is a rumor of course Rumor is that the words leaked out that I was coming And they decided to give up Well, that is Such a great story. We're up on our second commercial break. We are going to take a couple of seconds for commercials We'll be right back after this This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry Hello everyone and welcome back to this edition of in focus. I'm your host patrick berry today We're having such a fun conversation. I'm so excited I mentioned at the very start of this program that one of the things I want to achieve in life is to turn 100 years old And i'm very excited today because i'm sitting across the desk from a centenarian Mr. Robert garabedian He was born in 1924 And has seen a lot of things in his 100 plus years. He served our country During trained as a fighter pilot during the world war ii era and just before we went to break You said the japanese surrendered when they heard you got your wings and you were ready to go fight So well, that's my I like that story. So Did you after this after your service? Did you continue flying? Did you? Or did once your service was up you well, you know once it was up they offered me the opportunity to stay in the service if I wanted to and I by then After the japs gave up and everything Then we found out what it was like if you were training Intensively to do it, right? Very little flying time really. Oh, yeah, and you know Jobs, like well draw a pistol and go down to the wax. They're going to be paid today You sit on the side there With the pistol on this That's not what you wanted to do. That's not what I wanted to do I wanted to kill the buggers that had Done, that's wrong. So Early on I want to shift gears. So early on I asked you when did you meet the the love of your life? Marilyn, you said it was after your service. Let's talk. Well, okay, then I left the service. Okay took a reserve commission All right and left the service And started doing some traveling in the merchant marine, okay Okay I got tired of that come back. I became a correction officer and was going to school at the same time well Now my brother had gotten married during the war and started having a family lived at home Once a week I'd get home be with the family would stay there. I'd stay overnight for a night eat with the family Got to meet his growing family, right? He ended up with six wonderful girls. Wow lovely girls, so My darlings to this day and uh His wife Was a wonderful girl wonderful girl And she decided that she is going to find someone for me So we had a minstrel show going on at the church and I was a regular church goer all right and uh She tried to sell me a ticket to go to the minstrel show and I don't want to go to a minstrel show and she said oh you remember we were driving up route 18 bar and we went by this Woman who was working walking with vigor and everything and you said boy, that is a vigorous girl And I said, yeah, I remember that She said well her name is Marilyn Cole And she's gonna be in the show. Oh funny And we're gonna have a little dance afterwards. Oh, oh, that's the final thing. I love to dance so She sold me a ticket very good. I went to the show And sure enough after the show I met the girl who was up at the stage and met her in person and we danced a little bit Halfway through the night. I said, can I take her home this evening? I knew she lived right up the road a little way Said that's fine I took her home that night shook a hand No kissing right now first different era. Oh, that was a different time in those days so I took her home that night made a date for the next week I never went out with another girl and uh, you were married for 72 years. Yes, and you had 12 kids 12. You had to beat your brother with six, right? I had to beat my brother So I had eight sons and four daughters very good, okay, ten of my children are still living Yeah, and how many grandchildren do I have a couple dozen? I think i've got notes of roughly Uh 20 give or take roughly 25 grandchildren 25 great-grandchildren And and two great great grandchildren. Yeah, that's what they tell me So, let me ask you we've only got a couple of minutes left What if what has been the biggest change that you've seen in your life Gee There have been people getting out moving about Life is so much easier for people in so many ways if you want to work You can get a job right you can get a job. You can make a decent living You can have decent quarters. You don't have to worry about putting food on the table Television itself is a wonder a miracle I was thinking on the roads as I drove up here Coming into this station The wide beautiful roads that we have nowadays the people really appreciate You can get on those roads you go 60 miles an hour and just whiz along I buzz down to maryland to visit my sister whenever I want They jump on a plane to go wherever I want You could do all these things And it's just almost miraculous The change in life from what it was like back in the 20s To what it's like now, you know, so I think about some of the things that you've lived through we've we've talked about world war ii um And then the korean conflict the rise of the kennedy family the assassination of both kennedy brothers Um, and then into the 70s the recession of the 70s You know the the boom of the 80s the computer era which you know One of your last jobs was in in in data processing. So you got to work with computers You know medical just the the changes in medical tremendous things, right? What is what's what's been the most fun thing you've ever done? in anything You've been to 101 different countries marion my wife was the most wonderful thing I ever did and uh She was working at that time For an insurance and travel agency. So the man that owned the agency Gave us a trip to bermuda for a hundred. Wow. Very very nice. I thought I died you went to heaven too funny Oh, mr. Garabedian, unfortunately our time our time is up. I cannot thank you enough for joining me today This has been a fascinating wonderful conversation I'd love to hear about your experiences. I can't thank you again enough for your service to our country Um, even though you didn't get in that plane and head overseas like you wanted to but but you still served our country with honor Thank you so very much for joining me patrick. It's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. I've enjoyed it This is 22 news in focus with patrick berry