'Humble patriot': Jenkins, World War II veteran from Lakeland, dies at 104
When Herman Jenkins headed to Europe in 1944, he could not know if he would ever return home.
Jenkins not only survived World War II, he lived nearly eight decades longer, thriving in post-war life as a photographer and living to become Polk County’s most prominent symbol of what is often called the Greatest Generation.
Jenkins’ illustrious life ended Friday, when he died at age 104 in Lakeland.
"Herman Jenkins was a gentle, humble patriot," Gary Clark, chairman of the Polk County Veterans Council, said by email. "Challenges notwithstanding, he served his country, community and family with utmost honor and devotion. If asked to suggest a man to emulate, none better to be found than Herman Jenkins. Those of us who knew him are better for that privilege. Today God has a hero icon at his banquet table."
Jenkins, whose family moved to Lakeland when he was an infant in the early 1920s, graduated from the all-Black Washington Park High School in 1937. He had moved to Pittsburgh and was working in a steel mill when was drafted to duty in World War II.
After completing his Army training in Massachusetts, Jenkins joined the 3123rd Quartermaster Service Company before shipping across the Atlantic. White and Black units were kept in separate spaces on the transport ship, he told The Ledger in a 2021 interview.
Jenkins’ unit camped in England to prepare for the Invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.
“When the invasion started, our planes were flying over like bees, there were so many of them going over to France,” he said.
Crossing the English Channel with his quartermaster unit, Jenkins saw the water filed with the hulls of sunken military vessels. When his unit reached France, he and other soldiers traveled through a series of villages before taking their station near Cherbourg.
Guarding German prisoners
The unit was assigned to guarding military supply depots. Later, they watched over German prisoners of war at a makeshift camp inside a bombed-out building.
"They never did give us any trouble because, I think, they were glad to be in there,” Jenkins recalled. “Because if they had been out dodging bullets, getting killed, they thought it was better to be in there.”
Jenkins, a corporal, also led his squad of about 12 in helping to unload military shipments and deliver them back to the prison camp. The soldiers had to be alert for Germans parachuting into the area.
When the European fighting ended in spring 1945, Jenkins and his unit shipped across the Atlantic to New York, expecting to be sent to the Pacific theater.
“But before we got to New York, they announced that the war had ended over there,” he said. “And when that happened, the band got up on the boat right quick and started playing music. So we didn’t have to go over there.”
Jenkins was assigned to Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia. His family successfully appealed to the Army for his discharge, citing the illness of his father, who supported the entire family. Jenkins received an honorable discharge and returned to Lakeland.
He soon gained a job at the Empire Store, a shop specializing in women’s fashions that drew both white and Black customers. It was there that he met his future wife, Essie Mae Bryant, a teacher from Lake Wales.
Their marriage would last for 72 years.
A self-taught photographer, Jenkins operated a photography business for decades. Terry Coney, now president of the NAACP Lakeland Branch, recalled childhood visits to Jenkins’ home studio, first in the Webster Park neighborhood and later in the Pinehurst area.
“Especially as a kid, I had no idea about his World War II experience,” Coney said. “For me, he was the photographer. My mother took us all to his house to his studio, got dressed up for Easter pictures. He took pictures at the school when they had social events. I have a picture that he took of a ladies social group that my mother was a part of.”
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Rochelle School of the Arts in Lakeland recently honored Jenkins by naming a fabrication laboratory for him. That designation arose from a suggestion by Polk County School Board member Kay Fields, LkldNow reported.
In the 2021 interview with The Ledger, Jenkins recalled the regular marches through Black neighborhoods by Ku Klux Klan members, who wore white robes and hoods and carried weapons and Confederate battle flags. He said he didn’t dwell on the injustices he and other Blacks faced at home during his time fighting for his country in Europe.
“No, when you grew up like that, you just go on and figure one day it would change, and it did,” he said.
Honors late in life
Two years ago, Jenkins attended a ceremony at Veterans Memorial Park in Lakeland for the unveiling of a granite marker that honored “the Great African-American Generation.” He and J.J. Corbett, a member of the Army’s 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the first all-Black paratrooper unit during WWII, were the only such veterans in attendance.
Jenkins participated last year in the Honor Flight program, traveling from Lakeland to Washington, D.C. with about 200 other veterans. The trip occurred on Jenkins’ 103rd birthday.
U.S. Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Lakeland, helped arrange Jenkins’ travel. Franklin’s office produced a video about Jenkins to be entered in the archives of the Library of Congress.
Until the past year, Jenkins remained relatively active. In the 2021 interview, he said he still shopped and cooked for his wife. Last year, he threw the first pitch for a Detroit Tigers’ spring training game, Coney said.
“At 102, he was getting around better than some people I know that are in their 50s and 60s,” Coney said. “His wife is, what, six years, seven years younger than him, and she had had some medical issues and he was taking care of her, which you would think should have been the other way around.”
Coney said he hopes having Jenkins’ name enshrined at Rochelle School of the Arts will spark youngsters to learn about him. He described Jenkins as "an extraordinary man" and also "a very unassuming man."
“Young people should aspire to be like him, or at least know his story," Coney said. "I think we have too many people, too many young people now, that really have nobody that they look up to, would aspire to be like him. He would definitely be a model for that.”
Jenkins is survived by his wife; a daughter, Sheila Jenkins; and grandchildren. Information about a service was not available Friday afternoon.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland man who served with Black unit in World War II dies at 104
