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1 Known WWI Veteran Left After Bay Area Man Dies

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Harry Landis died Monday at Sun Terrace Health Care Center in Sun City Center.

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By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 6, 2008

TAMPA - World War I veteran Harry Landis has died in Sun City Center at the age of 108, leaving 107-year-old Frank Buckles of West Virginia as the only known surviving U.S. World War I veteran.

Landis died Monday at Sun Terrace Health Care Center in Sun City Center, his caregiver Donna Riley said. Until his final week, when he had trouble swallowing and left his apartment for Sun Terrace, the famously healthy Landis didn't need daily medication:

"He only took eyedrops and a vitamin," Riley said. "He would laugh and say he always had a better immune system than just about all his family members. He said it had to do with eating fresh vegetables, growing things himself."

A farm boy who grew up in Palmyra, Mo., Landis always downplayed his World War I service. He never saw action. In fact, he never left his college town of Fayette, Mo.

After the war started, the 18-year-old enlisted in the Student Army Training Corp. His service: mopping up after recruits suffering from influenza in a makeshift sick bay of a college dormitory.

He joined in October 1918. The armistice was signed Nov. 11, 1918. He was discharged honorably the next month.

"I never actually left my college," Landis told the Tribune in an interview last year. "They would send me with a mop and a bucket to clean the hospital floors. …That was my experience in the military. Seriously, it wasn't much more than that."

Buckles lives in Charles Town, W.Va., on his family cattle farm, and is in good health.

"He's doing great," said his caretaker, Barbara Norman. "I know he went out Saturday with some friends and had lunch because he turned 107 on Friday."

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