By Mark Hallum
New York native Herman Breden celebrated his 100th birthday April 2, surrounded by family. The World War II veteran and former NYPD officer was born in the Bronx, but enjoys a relative amount of freedom in his Little Neck home, where he has lived since 1959.
Breden grew up in the South Bronx and studied animal husbandry and agriculture, his granddaughter Pamela Primi said. At that time in the Bronx, farms were common unlike today’s urban landscape, but finding work was still a difficult task. Working in agriculture in Connecticut, Breden met his wife before being sent to fight in WWII.
Breden served with the Army in Africa, then Italy, Primi said. But on a ship at night after the victory in Europe, when the next step was to take on the Japanese, Primi said there was a surprise for the soldiers on board being deployed to yet another theatre of war.
“It was the middle of the night and he noticed the ship turn around by his orientation to the North Star. He realized they were going home and the war was over,” Primi said.
He and his fellow soldiers were excited that they could leave the war behind and finally return home.
After Breden returned from the war, he began his career with the NYPD where he stayed for 35 years, retiring in 1979. According to Primi, her grandfather never missed a day of work as a patrolman on Central Park South along 59th Street, before keeping the peace in the South Bronx. He capped off his career in law enforcement at a precinct in Flushing.
In 2003, he was honored with other veterans in the Little Neck-Douglaston Memorial Day Parade.
Breden was known in the community as a Boy Scout leader who assisted with the fund-raising efforts of his wife, Mary Breden, who played a prominent role in the community. She was an organizer of the Little Neck-Douglaston Memorial Day Parade and was honored in the parade in the late 1990s for her work to maintain the Glenwood Landing triangle park near the Little Neck railroad station.
Mary Breden died in 2011 at the age of 92.
In his 90s, Breden took a job at the Queens County Community Farm as a tour guide. There, he put his education in animal husbandry to use teaching school kids.
Breden lives a mostly independent life at the home he’s lived in for nearly 60 years. Family and aides help with much of the work that needs to be done. But Breden takes only two different kinds of medication and is able to fix some of the foods he enjoys, such as steel-cut oats from scratch, on his own.
Two years ago, he lost the ability to walk for the most part, but gets around in a rolling chair. A bum knee from a football injury and other wear-and-tear from his years as a beat cop have taken somewhat of a toll, but these physical challenges do not get this Army veteran down.
“He’s still a very independent, hardworking person,” Primi said. “Mentally, he’s 100 percent.
Breden fathered five children. He also has seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhall
