JACK FEIN International Man of History

Jacob (Jack) Fein – he likes to be called Jack – begins every conversation with a complaint: “All the women are chasing me.”
You feel like he must be kidding, because Jack turned 90 years old a month ago, but his light-hearted attitude about his age makes you wonder. There are many older women out there. He advises to get up early, drink lots of fluids, walk every day, and “pray for everybody.”
Nevertheless, that does not stop Jack Fein from being a tenacious advocate for his beloved Fort Totten in Bayside, Queens, not to be confused with the other Fort Totten in North Dakota. His prime complaint is “politicians,” and the 18 groups he says are “at each other’s throats” over how to carve up the Fort. He is particularly upset at the notion of developers, who would despoil this historic site to “make millions.”
Chief Warrant Officer Jack Fein (retired) is the Official Curator for Military History at Fort Totten, a position to which he was appointed in 1953. “When he appointed me over 10 other people, General Meyer told me to learn everything (about the fort) and I’m still at it,” he says. Indeed, after a 35-year military career, he worked as a volunteer, giving tours of the old fort and maintaining sites, and in 1999 was made a City Seasonal Associate with the Parks Department.
Warrant officers are in a sort of limbo between officers and enlisted men, who do the same administrative work as commissioned officers, for less money and prestige. You address a warrant officer as “Mister,” instead of “Sir.” As Jack recalls, “They wanted to make me a commissioned officer in Korea, but a lot of my friends who became regular officers wound up getting shot, so I decided to stay what I was.”
At 90, Fein is one of the oldest living veterans of World War II, and the Korean War. During WWII, he participated in the defense of the Pacific side of the Panama Canal.
When he enlisted in 1935, at a time when the Army was still using horses and mules for transport, he was assigned to the Coast Artillery. “They sent me to Wyoming to learn about the animals, and then stationed me at Fort Totten in 1936” he reminisces. When asked, he opined that his experience with mules gave him some practice in dealing with those politicians and competing groups.
Some view him as a curmudgeon, a cantankerous old man who wants his own way. He doesn’t see it like that. “I’m concerned with the preservation of the entire fort,” he insists, adding, “So many regiments were formed here. So many young men were here who went off and are gone.” At the drop of a hat, he will begin a recitation of Fort Totten’s history.
There are only a few things that get Jack off his humor; the fate of the fort; the loss of his wife in 1986 at 55 years of age, and the good portion of his military career which he spent in “Graves Registration.”
Graves Registration is one of those military euphemisms which conjure up an image of men in offices, engaged in endless list making. In actuality, those units recovered the dead from battlefields and makeshift graves, and saw to their proper identification and burial. Back when the military was still segregated, it was an assignment for men of color, and men with names like Jacob Fein. You get the feeling that his concern over the memory of those who left Fort Totten and never returned runs deep, to his very core.
Fein confided that even today, he’s waiting for a call from the Department of the Army, to accompany home the body of a fallen soldier from Iraq. He won’t get specific, except to say that he’ll probably be going to North Carolina. “All those boys…” is all he will say.
Whenever he travels to Washington, D.C., he goes to Arlington National Cemetery, to pay his respects to his many departed comrades in arms, and visit his wife’s resting place. He has many friends in Washington, who he says are waiting to read this article about him.
“Just don’t print my picture. I can’t keep the women away.”