102-year-old WWII vet, after losing home to Hurricane Ian, makes new life in Orange Park

Vaughn "Sam" Humphrey has quite a story to tell: He's a World War II Army veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, he turns 102 on Saturday and just this last fall a neighbor carried him out of his Bonita Springs home as the water inside it rose and rose during Hurricane Ian's onslaught.

But he insists none of that's really worth making a fuss about. And while he's patient and good-natured and accommodating, he'll give it to you straight.

“I don’t like talking about it. In fact, I didn’t even want this today,” he said this week.

By this, he means a reporter and photographer, there to meet him at Palagio Senior Living in Orange Park.

And as for the Saturday birthday party that's been planned for him by local chapters of Daughters of the American Revolution and Sons of the American Revolution?

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“I would rather they didn’t do it. It was all David’s idea,” he said of his nephew. "I don’t like publicity."

DAR's Betty Reed, who's helping organize the party, was sitting at a table with him inside the Palagio. She smiled. “Humble and modest,” she said.

That's the way Sam Humphrey has always been, said his nephew, David Humphrey, 85, the David who came up with the idea for the party.

He and his wife Carolyn live at Palagio next door to Sam, who moved up to join them after selling his hurricane-damaged home in Southwest Florida.

Growing up in Iowa, David, a Vietnam veteran, never heard his Uncle Sam tell much of anything in the way of war stories. He would just say he didn't remember much about it and anyway he didn't want to talk about it.

"I think it’s been a good defense mechanism, a coping mechanism, and a lot of guys are like that," David said.

He did manage to interest his uncle in a Band of Brothers tour, which takes visitors to war sites from Normandy to Munich. But that interest disappeared as soon as Sam saw a concentration camp on the agenda. His division had liberated two concentration camps.

“That’s the ones you want to forget," Sam Humphrey said.

Farm life and Hurricane Ian

Sam Humphrey chuckled slyly at the inevitable question asked of any centenarian: What's the secret to a long life?

“It wasn’t good clean living when I was younger," he said. "I was 46 years old before I ever got married, and you can imagine the running around we done.”

It’s remarked that he doesn’t look 102.

“Well, there’s days I feel that way," he said. "No, I feel pretty good most of the time. I‘ve always walked a lot, but now I just shuffle along. But I go out in the back every day and make the circles out there, sit down a little while and get up and walk them again. Or shuffle them along.”

He's always gone by Sam instead of his given name of Vaughn. He's not sure why. He's heard that it's because he had red hair when he was young and an aunt started calling him Sandy, which turned into Sam, but he can't vouch for the accuracy of that.

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He grew up on a farm outside North English, Iowa, where his parents, Clarence and Alba, raised animals and grew corn, along with crops such as soybeans and wheat. The family lost their farm in the Depression and had to rent a property until they could another farm years later.

Even though there were six Humphrey children, Clarence and Alba took in other kids during the Depression, kids from town who were hungry and at least had some food on the farm.

Young Sam worked hard, waking up early, milking cows by hand, doing whatever else was needed.

During high school he rode a horse 13 miles each day, into North English, to go to classes. Sometimes, if it was storming, he spent the night at a cousin's house in town, but otherwise that was his routine.

It was a good life, he supposes, the only one he knew at the time.

He drove a truck after high school, until he was drafted in November 1942 and sent to Camp Dodge, Iowa. After the war he came home and drove a truck again, delivering farm goods to markets, until he eventually became a machinist at a big company that made radio and communications equipment.

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His late wife Burnadean was some six years older. She had an uncle in Bonita Springs near Naples, and after Sam retired in 1983 they visited there. After that, they split the year between Iowa an Bonita Springs until going fulltime Florida in 1993.

Burnadean was killed in a car accident in 2010, and after that Sam lived alone in their house in Bonita Springs. He was doing fine on his own until the hurricane.

He said he wasn't scared — the winds actually weren't too bad — but there was nothing he could do about the water overflowing from a nearby canal and invading his home.

Neighbors came to check on him. "By the time they got there, the water was coming in my house and they carried me out of there," he said. He ended up selling the house and moving up to Northeast Florida next to his nephew.

He's OK with that, he said. It's not worth making a fuss.

A Bronze Star

In Europe, Sam Humphrey, the truck driver, drove a Jeep in the 41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, 11th Armored Division, much of the time with his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Herbert M. Foy Jr., as a passenger.

Asked if he felt in danger in that Jeep, he chuckled.

“Oh, you’re right out in the open. They had a canvas top you could put up, but … “

David Humphrey mentions that his uncle won a Bronze Star during his service, but has never told him how that happened.

A few days before his 102nd birthday, Sam Humphrey's not about to change that.

“All they told me," he said, "was bravery beyond the call of duty, so I don’t know. I don’t know what it was.”

Then he's asked: Is he proud of what he did in Europe, so long ago?

“Oh yeah, I guess," he said. There was a long pause. "Proud the way it turned out, I guess.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: WWII vet in Jacksonville survived Battle of the Bulge, Hurricane Ian