(WHTM) — Every veteran’s story is remarkable in its own way, and that is certainly true for one 102-year-old WWII Marine vet in Pennsylvania.
All WWII Veteran Bess Gorelick wanted was “To do something to be helpful to my country,” she said. “And I thought that that would be the best thing to do for me.
She certainly did not take the easy way out, joining the Marines, based in Arlington, Virginia, where they had barracks. She was doing the jobs men usually did – so they could go fight.
“I was not a civilian,” Gorelick said. “I was a marine, and I – that’s what I had to do. Whatever the rules were. Our troop learned how to march,” she said while showing a photo of her troop. “Everything had to be exact. Couldn’t make a misstep. it would spoil it for everybody.”
They were her family during the war – which meant holidays together.
“You’re looking at the Jewish center,” Gorelick said while holding another photo. “They had a Seder for service people. For Passover.”
Her faith – as important then as later. She learned how to read the Torah when she was 95. Most people who ever learned to read from the Torah learn before they’re 12 or 13 years old, but she learned at 95.