Corsica honors its oldest-living veteran

Clarion-Limestone School District Superintendent John Johnson, right, presents a C-L diploma to 96-year-old World War II veteran Don Mauthe during the Corsica Fourth of July parade on Monday. Mauthe entered the Navy when he was only a junior in high school and had not received his diploma. (By Randy Bartley)

On the Fourth of July, Corsica Borough in Jefferson County honored the community’s oldest veteran, 96-year-old Don Mauthe, who served as grand marshal of the annual parade.

“I was a junior in high school. I was just a green kid,” said Mauthe, who joined the Navy at age 17 in 1946. “It was an honor to serve. I figured it was my duty to go and I went. That has changed.”

Mauthe went to boot camp at Camp Sampson, New York, and was transferred to the Naval Training and Distribution Center in California.” I was there when the war ended in August 1945,” he said.

“I went out on an LST (landing ship tank). It was a floating bathtub. We floated around quite a bit and I got to Hawaii. The crew on that boat had shot down 11 Japanese planes. I started training as a gunner’s mate, but then I was transferred.

“I came back to the states on a troop transport and across the country on a troop train.”

That transfer put him on fleet tanker. “I went to Aruba. I could have stayed there,” he said. “The people were great.”

Mauthe said he learned a lot about people while he was in the Navy.

“There were a lot of good people and some not-so-good people,” he said. “I learned to take care of myself because there was no one else to take care of you.”

Mauthe said he enlisted for the duration of the war. “As it turned out, I was in for two years, 1945 and discharged in 1946.”

When Mauthe returned home, he immediately entered the workforce. He never returned to pick up his high school diploma, which he finally received on Monday from the Clarion-Limestone School District.

Mauthe’s son-in-law Chris Simpson said his father-in-law has been a successful businessman who has lived his entire life in Corsica and described him as a “community leader and a cultural hero.”

 

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