Flushing’s Lenny Vogel, who fought on the frontlines during the Second World War, celebrated his 105th birthday with a celebratory luncheon at the Flushing House retirement home on Dec. 7.
Vogel, who was born in Williamsburg in 1920, attended public school in Brooklyn before joining the U.S. Army during World War II, where he served in the European Theater.
Vogel turned 105 on Dec. 8 and marked the landmark birthday a day earlier, joining family and friends for a luncheon at Flushing House.
“People, very often, are very interested in my health at my age,” Vogel said, noting that he has his blood pressure taken every day in addition to receiving a monthly visit from a nurse. He remarked that nurses often joke that he boasts better blood pressure than they do.
Vogel married his wife Claire in 1942 and the couple first settled in Manhattan before moving to their eventual home in Flushing. Claire, a first-generation New Yorker from the Bronx, died in 2006.
The couple had shared a love for travel and traveled the world extensively together, journeying to far-flung places such as Cuba and Mexico together.
“That really was a very big part of their lives, even when they were still working, they loved to travel,” Vogel’s daughter Wind said.
Wind, Vogel’s only child, said her father took up a job in the New York State Department of Labor after returning from the war, adding that he has been living in Flushing House for the past 11 years, where she visits him five days a week.
“I’ve been very busy watching over him,” she said.
She said her father loved to watch tennis and read in his spare time but added that he has found those activities more challenging in recent years as his eyesight deteriorated. However, she said he retains a “good deal” of his mental capacities and described him as a “remarkable person.”
Despite being Vogel’s only daughter, Wind has not been the only one to regularly visit her father.
Larry Hirsch struck up a friendship with Vogel in what the World War Two veteran described as “unusual” circumstances.
Hirsch regularly visited his parents at Flushing House, befriending Vogel while visiting his own father Milton.
“For some unknown reason, his father wanted to sit at the same table that I was sitting at during meal time, and Larry used to come to visit three times a week,” Vogel said. “He stayed for lunch. And as a result of that, we got to know each other.”
Hirsch, meanwhile, described his friend as an “unusual guy” because he boasts the mind of a 30-year-old at the age of 105.
“He complains that he forgets things, but he has a really sharp mind,” Hirsch said. “He’s intellectually curious and he’s a real humanist. He has values that are really worth hearing about. We get to talk about everything from politics to words to what’s in the news today.”
He added that it is always a “fun conversation” when he speaks to Vogel and said he looks always forward to his their chats.
“It’s one of the highlights of my day when I when I talk to Lenny, it’s always a fun conversation.”
