written by Todd DePastino Happy 95th Birthday to Popeye, one of the few Americans to serve in four branches of service (Merchant Marine, Coast Guard, Navy, and, yes, Army--more on that below). He was also at once the toughest and most tender-hearted of cartoon characters. He overcame a one-eye disability, a serious
. . Walter Schwartz studied chemistry at Carnegie Tech, and then worked in a top industry laboratory making paint. “You can’t win a war without a lot of paint,” he says, seriously. Yet, Walter felt that he’d rather be where the action was during WW II. However, after getting the cold
. . Jim Scheder served his country from 1944 to 1946 in the United States Merchant Marine Service, and from 1946 to 1951 in the United States Army. Those seven years were an odyssey. As a Merchant Mariner, his first port-of-call was Iran via the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the
. . Bob Olsen was a marine engineer in the US Merchant Marine Service during World War II. Following the war, he served in the US Naval Reserve from 1945 until 1959
. . Felix Marcello began his military career in 1943 with the US Merchant Marines but later joined the US Army as a paratrooper at the end of 1943. He fought in the Phillipines and was part of the first wave of troops into Japan for the occupation before finishing his
