'A wonderful life': Ormond Beach WWII vet Ed Vrona has died, 10 days after 104th birthday
For Ed Vrona, the secret to a rewarding existence involved a combination of intelligence, curiosity, humor and kindness, a mixture that he enthusiastically embraced in a remarkable life that stretched across more than a century.
A World War II veteran and beloved resident for many years at the Aberdeen At Ormond manufactured home community in Ormond Beach, Vrona died on Friday, just 10 days after his 104th birthday on the Fourth of July.
“I’m the luckiest guy I know,” Vrona said during a 2019 luncheon celebration of his 100th birthday at the Aberdeen clubhouse. It was a phrase that his family and friends will tell you that he repeated often.
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“He was always so grateful for everything,” said Cindy Miller, the activities director at Aberdeen who met Vrona nine years ago. “He would tell you many times that he had a wonderful life.”
On Monday, Miller said that those who knew Vrona were really the lucky ones.
“Ed was one in a million,” she said. “I always felt like he brought so much to the residents here.
“Everybody loved Ed. I personally loved to sit and chat with him as often as I could. He could tell you stores about 50 years ago and know the exact dates. He had a great memory and probably the sharpest mind of anybody in the community. I’m so thankful that our paths crossed, and I got to know him. I’ll never forget him.”
From war to COVID, Vrona saw history over more than a century
Born on July 4, 1919, in Butternut, Wisconsin, Vrona started his life amid a worldwide flu epidemic. Throughout his long life, he also persevered through the Great Depression, World War II and, most recently, another global health crisis in the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the assistance of a walker, he regularly trekked the 400 steps from his home to the Aberdeen clubhouse, a precise distance calculation that reflects his lifelong interest and skill at mathematics.
As a younger man, that focus became the foundation of Vrona’s service in World War II, where he was a technical sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps.
During the war, he kept Allied planes in the air to battle Japanese forces in New Guinea by improvising a hand-held gadget to insert into the cylinder shaft and break loose frozen threads.
At Aberdeen, his skills turned to creating wooden fish for ornamental wall-hangings and more than 100 intricately carved wooden angels, the latter a project that began as a tribute to his wife of 68 years, Georgie, who died on Christmas Eve eight years ago.
He and Georgie worked together for a decade on Vrona’s most impressive project, an elaborate dollhouse that’s a miniature recreation of the 1930s home where she was raised in Stickney, Illinois, and others where the couple later raised a family.
Georgie made the tiny area rugs in the bedroom and living room. Ed assembled the roof out of 960 shingles, added by hand 10 at a time. There are nine different colors in the paint scheme, with the exterior blend of teal and coral inspired by a Victorian home that the couple admired in Key West.
In May, Vrona donated the dollhouse to the Easterseals Autism Center of Excellence in Daytona Beach, where it now greets visitors and staff members in the lobby.
Vrona's thirst for life continued until the end
By that time, Vrona had moved to the Emory L. Bennett Memorial Veterans Nursing Home in Daytona Beach following a diagnosis in November of advanced prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, said his daughter Vicki Boquist of Orland Park, Illinois.
Despite the diagnosis, Vrona crammed a lot of living into the months he had left, she said.
Thanks to a veterans support organization, he traveled to Cape Canaveral in November to watch a SpaceX launch and talk science with NASA astronauts. After the trip, NASA enlisted Nashville, Tennessee-based songwriter David Kent to compose a song about Vrona’s experience, “Angel Wings,” his daughter said.
“My dad embraced life; he embraced everybody he met in his life,” Boquist said. “He loved talking to people and he was so curious about everything. That’s how it was throughout his life. Everywhere he went he made friends. It was definitely a life well-lived.”
That assessment was echoed by Sam Riner, one of Vrona’s close friends at Aberdeen. Riner was among the residents who organized annual July 4th birthday celebrations for Vrona that ranged from clubhouse luncheons to golf cart parades with police escorts throughout the neighborhoods.
“I don’t know how many people you meet in your life where you can just talk with them for hours at a time,” Riner said. “Ed and I could talk about anything. He was so easy to be around. He was probably the closest friend I have.”
In addition to his daughter, Vrona is survived by another daughter, Joann Balous, of Long Beach, Indiana; son Wayne Vrona, of Olympia, Washington; sister-in-law Bay Typner, of Holly Hill; six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Vrona’s ashes have been sent to the family’s homestead in Indiana, where they will be mixed with Georgie’s ashes to be spread on the property, Boquist said.
At her father’s request, no public memorial service is planned, she said.
“His philosophy was always, ‘Come see me when I’m alive,’” said Boquist, adding that there was special significance when friends and family recently convened for Vrona’s final July 4th birthday celebration at Emory L. Bennett. It was a party that included a fly-over of four vintage military aircraft and the presentation of a hand-crafted red, white and blue quilt.
“Our feeling is that we had his celebration of life on his birthday this year,” she said. “We had his celebration of life while he was still alive, which was what he always wanted. He knew this was the end, but he was surrounded by people who just loved him.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Ormond Beach WWII vet Ed Vrona has died at age 104
