Faces of veterans

These three men and one woman are as different as any four people could be. Yet they all have one thing in common -- they gave of themselves when their country needed them most. No matter if it was for life -- or just a few years of it -- each of these soldiers gave every ounce of their being to ensure the safety of their beloved country. These four people represent a fraction of the 26.4 million U.S. veterans (about 13 percent of U.S. civilians 18 and older) that are recognized today, Veterans' Day.

It is a diverse group to say the least, with people of different backgrounds, lives and beliefs. Here is a look at four former soldiers who now make their homes in Naples.

Jerry Vallez

He's not a braggart nor is he big on sharing war stories. The only way one would know artist Jerry Vallez is a World War II vet is if he happened upon his most recent painting of the cruiser USS Montpelier with one of its scout/observation sea planes hovering in the wispy clouds above.

The painting sits proudly and majestically in the window of his Naples gallery on Eighth Street South.

For those who are unfamiliar, the Montpelier -- a 10,000-ton Navy cruiser -- served in the Pacific during World War II and earned 13 battle stars and a presidential unit citation. It was credited with four enemy ships sunk or damaged, 14 aircraft destroyed in the air and 14 bombardments. It was even featured in the bestseller "Pacific War Diary 1942-1945."

The Montpelier had four SOC36 "Gooney Bird" airplanes, and Vallez was an aviation radio/gunner in the back seat of one of them. When it went out on missions, the cruiser catapulted the planes from the ship and then retrieved them with a crane on the stern.

"They were really ancient war horses," the now 78-year-old Vallez says of the Gooney Birds.

Wearing a sunny peach shirt with a collection of pens in his front pocket, jeans and a belt with a sailboat buckle, today Vallez doesn't look the least bit military. He rocks gently in a wooden rocker in the front room of his cozy gallery, surrounded by his mostly maritime artwork and discussing his latest look into the past.

He says it was his daughter who inspired him to do this latest piece. He's known mostly for realistic marine paintings -- from the Naples Pier to the roseate spoonbill. But his daughter thought he should take a stab at painting something from his distant past. And he did.

"The hardest part of that painting was where to put the clouds," he says, pointing at the picture he's removed from the gallery window and placed on an easel a few feet from himself.

"I was only 18 years old," he says and tugs at his salt-and-pepper beard. "I don't think I'd have the guts (to do that sort of thing now). "At that age, you're fearless."

Vallez explains how it was his job to climb up on top of the plane and connect the wire from the ship to the plane so it could be hoisted. "If you missed you really were in trouble."

He never planned to be on a Gooney Bird. It just kind of happened, like many things during war time. First, Vallez says he went in to gunnery school and then was transferred to radio school. "And that was just awful." It was then he went to the V division and then on the Montpelier.

"All that money was great," he says of the time. "And it was exciting."

He gets out of his chair momentarily to share some wartime books and pictures he has sitting on a table near the front door of his gallery.

He opens a yearbook of sorts and pulls out a couple of yellowing pictures.

"I've never seen any of them again," he says wistfully as he shows a picture of a group of military men all holding glasses of saki. Not that he doesn't care what happened to his comrades. "I'm just not into these reunions. A lot of people are and that's fine."

He starts to explain about the glasses of saki, how they'd had too much that day. He smiles at the memory.

"Those are the things that come back to you sitting here," he says.

Classical music wafts through the gallery and Vallez gets quiet for a moment. Discussion then quickly moves back to his art.

"I've been trying to make a living at it for 40 years," he says, pointing at the dozens of paintings that flank the walls. "Over the years I've done just about everything, but it's usually marine work."

He and his wife of 53 years have lived in Naples since 1972. She's been his rock, he says, adding she's the one who told him above all else, to be true to his art and do what he needed to do to be an artist.

It was the GI Bill that enabled Vallez to go to college and he later established his own studio and began entering competitive art shows. The rest is history.

But it's a history that may never have happened had he not been a survivor of World War II.

"In those days, hundreds were killed a day. We were very lucky. We only lost 12 men over three years." And two planes.

Although there is still talk about what was done by those who were part of the Montpelier, Vallez shrugs off any personal accolades.

"I did so little compared to so many."

Gene Smaltz

Gene Smaltz is quick to say that he too only did what he had to do in World War II. Nothing special, just his job.

Upon walking into his North Naples home, one learns differently. His wife of 60 years, Gloria, has gathered mementos she's kept stored away for years and laid them all out on the dining room table. Gracing the center is a sepia-toned picture of a baby-faced Smaltz wearing an Army uniform and a semi-serious look on his face.

"There's a cigarette dangling down there," he says with a laugh, noting -- thank goodness -- that part is covered up by the frame. He kicked the habit years ago, although it was quite the thing to do in those years.

During the war he was a chauffeur of sorts. "We took people from Naples (Italy) to North Africa over to here and onto Miami," he says pointing to a faded nylon map that was part of his escape package when he was a pilot in the Army Air Force and stationed in Italy.

So proud of her husband and his war work, Gloria later used the cloth map as a scarf.

The couple, who'll celebrate their 60th anniversary on Nov. 20, were dating the year before Smaltz went in to the Army. They married in 1943 in Phoenix.

"I was in cadets. I remember walking tours -- with a rifle yet -- four hours before the ceremony." He was 20 and Gloria was 21.

So very young, so very much in love. Gloria shows a picture of the two of them when they were engaged, two young kids, arms wrapped about each other. Not a care in the world.

Then she walks over and picks up a linen looking green suit. "I just ironed this. It was my wedding dress."

It's easy to imagine this smiling woman -- who's now donning a white blouse and black pants -- sporting the vintage garment. "I can still wear the jacket, but the skirt ... ." And she giggles and looks at her waist.

Wearing khaki pants and a similar colored shirt, Gene also looks a little different than he does in the sepia-toned picture. But if you look past his glasses perched on his nose, the eyes are a dead give away. They are the eyes of the young man, embarking on a new adventure.

"We've been very fortunate," Gloria says. "I thought I'd never see him again," and her voice trails off.

Gene's job in the Army during World War II was pilot of C-47s. He received an air medal for combat hours.

"Primarily we'd move the wounded," he says. "Kind of a jack of all trades."

Three years he spent in the military. "We had it easy compared to most," he says. "We were unarmed and unarmored. We'd go out at night." But still, he says, he had no idea whether he'd make it home or not.

The couple then pulls out the pictures, dozens of them. Some are ripped, and some are not identified, but most have dates on the front, especially those of their first born daughter Diane.

"I brought a dozen roses," he says, remembering the birth of his first with a smile. "I made a shot to the hospital in Wisconsin."

Apparently, he was supposed to be heading to war.

"I heard the footsteps (down the hallway of the hospital), clop, clop, clop. I knew it was him," Gloria says.

Almost as soon as he got to hold his baby girl, "Away we went overseas," Gene says and ends the story.

That's when Gloria attempts to share some of the letters he wrote while away at war.

"You want to end this interview right now?" he jokes. And Gloria quickly folds one of her fond memories and tucks it back into a brown folder.

As for other pictures, Gene shows one of his roommates when he was at Texas Tech, flying Piper Cubs. He remembers each of their names, but, like Vallez, he says he doesn't know what happened to any of them. Life got in the way.

After the war, the Smaltzes felt they needed to make some major decisions. They had a family to think about now.

"She told me, either you fly for the Army, or you don't fly," Gene says, glancing at his wife.

He listened to her and ended up starting a concrete forming company in 1973. The Bonita Springs business is now run by his daughter and son-in-law.

"They've all made us very proud," Gloria says of their three children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. "It's all good. We have nothing to complain about."

Ed Markunas

Ed Markunas has lots of stories. Some happy and some not so happy.

He's a jovial sort with silver hair and a mustache, piercing blue eyes and quick with a joke.

It hasn't always been that way, the 79-year-old Markunas says. He used to be a very serious sort.

"I didn't always joke around," he says. "It's been the last 10 to 15 years." Over that time the Naples resident has let a lot of things go. Come to terms with what happened to him while serving as a combat infantryman in the Army during World War II.

He spent two years serving his country in the Army -- mostly in Europe.

"I took my basic training in anti-aircraft," he says, but later changed to infantry because they needed men overseas.

When he made it into combat he was shot twice. Not at the same time, different times. He says this matter-of-factly. As if everyone has been shot. As if everyone knows how it feels to have a burning piece of metal pierce his skin.

The first time, "You're scared. You don't know what happened," he says. "When you're 19, you don't even know what decisions to make," let alone know how to get shrapnel out of a leg. But he learned quickly. Made a tourniquet himself and pulled the lead out.

But the shootings were nothing compared to what he dealt with for eight months when he was in a German prison camp.

"The dates are not distinct," he says of when he was captured. But he thinks it was sometime around Oct. 1, 1944. "'Cause that was a pay period."

From here his stories are jumbled. There's no time element and he bobs from combat situations to funny personal anecdotes.

"Some of the stories get me a little teary," he admits. Like the one he tells about the winter of 1944-45 when he was on work detail in Germany as a POW.

It was so dreadfully cold that day. So cold that Markunas didn't notice or feel his nose or ears. It was a Russian man who warned him and told him -- using hand gestures, since he didn't know English -- that he needed to cover up or he'd get frostbite.

"I'll never forget that," he says, choking up. "He got the hell beaten out of him for helping me."

He's quiet for a few minutes. "You live with a lot of things," Markunas says. He's dealt with ringing in his ears, no feeling in his fingers, a heart condition, and the list goes on. But, "I'm grateful, so to speak."

He made it home alive, if not 100 percent healthy.

Readjusting to civilian life wasn't tough for him. He went back to school and got an optometry degree. He buried himself in a heavy work schedule for 40 years. And now, he jokes "I'm playing catch-up. I've got a guilt complex."

He's active in a variety of groups and an officer in some of them. He's treasurer of the local Lion's Club and 21/2 years ago he helped start the Combat Infantrymen's Association of Southwest Florida. They started with 10 men and now have nearly 250.

Today at 11 a.m. there's even an unveiling and dedication of a monument to honor those who earned the Combat Infantrymen's Badge at the Southwest Florida Museum of History in Fort Myers.

The purpose of the Southwest Florida combat group isn't particularly to tell stories, but share the habits that each campaign had, he says, whether it was World War II, Korea, Vietnam or the most recent war with Iraq.

He's learned a lot since he was the 19-year-old boy in a foreign country do his best to deal with war. Hindsight is always 20-20 that way.

"If I had to do it again, though, I'd probably do nothing different," he says and leans back in his chair ready to tell another story.

Margaret 'Loretta' Farley

Lt. Col. Margaret "Loretta" Farley is Army from the top of her short brown hair, to the tips of her shiny shoes.

AT A GLANCE

How did Veterans Day begin? The first Veterans Day is said to have officially started in 1921, when an unknown World War I American soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Similar ceremonies occurred earlier in England and France, where an unknown soldier was buried in each nation's highest place of honor. All the services took place on Nov. 11, the anniversary of the end of World War I at 11 a.m., Nov. 11, 1918 (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month). This became known as Armistice Day. Armistice Day officially became a holiday in the United States in 1926. On June 1, 1954, the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans. In 1968, new legislation changed the national commemoration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. In 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date of Nov. 11. Source: Infoplease.com Today's veterans Total: 26.4 million Women: 1.6 million Median age: 57.4 years Age 65 or older: 9.7 million White: 22.6 million African-American: 2.6 million Hispanic: 1.1 million Asian: 284,000 American Indian: 196,000 Source: U.S. Census Bureau

This 54-year-old is small in stature, but great in presence. Her eyes are soft, yet intense behind large tortoise shell-rimmed glasses.

Her voice is cordial with a little Virginia twang mixed with midwestern Ohio. When she speaks rapidly the twang wins out.

Farley was a reservist when she wasn't on active duty. She volunteered for Vietnam just out of college.

"It really was another full-time job," she says of her reserve days. "It's quite a commitment."

Only about 6 percent of veterans are women like Farley. But, like other veterans, she's very modest and matter-of-fact about the time she gave to her country.

She went in to the Army as a second lieutenant just after college graduation with a nursing degree. Her first job? To work with casualties of Vietnam in Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

It was her first experience with death, dying and war.

"We sometimes had litters in the hall," she says, remembering the horror of it all. "It's ironic, but in this intensive care room we had a soldier from the Spanish American War die -- who was the oldest soldier -- as well as the youngest casualty of the war on the same day. And I'm 21 at this time."

To say it was overwhelming is an understatement.

"You don't think about it until later. That's how life is. We're into survival and doing what needs to be done."

In those days she did everything but think about death and dying. But now, she says, years after all of it has been said and done, "Talking is personally a leap of faith, to share as well as to heal."

She's literally given most of her life to the military, retiring in 1997. Her background was as a nurse, instructor and trainer.

From the time she started she thought, "I'll have a home in the Army," she says. "I absolutely loved the camaraderie. It was your family."

But it was about more than family, it was about respect. "All women in the military are always considered first a soldier and I always appreciated that," Farley says.

As for regrets, she doesn't discuss any, but shares what she thinks about sometimes when she's alone.

"I very often wonder what happened to my patients," she says, looking out toward the sliding glass doors of the Naples condominium she shares with her elderly mother.

When asked what she's the most proud of, she quickly mentions the Expert Field Medical Badge she received in 1982. She's one of very few women who've received it. It's a proficiency badge that one wears on the lapel.

What did she have to accomplish to get it? For starters there was a 12-mile march in full gear. Then there was a 1-mile obstacle course, carrying a live person on her back.

"I was in my 30s at the time," she says. "I had an M-16 and we had to go through this pipe and I said, 'Right!'" Needles to say, "It's pretty intense training."

She starts looking through a book, remembering. She was chief of nursing education and staff development at Fort Lee in Virginia, she volunteered for duty during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. She had to prepare people to go to Saudi Arabia.

Most of Farley's experience was with Mobile Army Surgical Hospital units. "I've spent a lot of time in tents and latrines," she jokes.

Now, she volunteers in several organizations in the community -- church as well as military. She shows a recent picture of herself riding in a car in a parade. "This is what I do now," she says with a laugh.

But seriously, "Whenever I see a veteran I put out my hand and say thank you for serving." Her eyes fill with teary emotion. "I know what goes into it."

There's a lot of sacrifice, but the honor of serving her country is still a flame that burns within her.

"It was a privilege of mine."