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The Villages
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Village of Belvedere man looks back on lifetime of service

“It was a fantastic day! I can’t explain the feeling,” says Don Maehenbrock who was a guest on the recent Villages Honor Flight. “People were clapping and saying, ‘Thank God for the vets.’ Teens took pictures and we felt like football stars,” he remembers. “We got letters from school kids in Kentucky and Ohio.”

He also gives high marks to his guardian, Bob Litman.

“He did everything but breathe for me.”

Don joined the U.S. Army in 1949 after a difficult childhood.

“My father died when I was seven. My mother didn’t work – there was no work. We’re on city welfare.”

Every few days Don and his older brother went to a nearby church basement in Bridgeport, Conn. where they were given food – the family did not have a refrigerator.

“So we only got a few days of food at a time.  I think that 60 percent of it was prunes,” he laughs.

Eventually his mother remarried but Don and his stepfather didn’t get along. Then followed two years in a military academy.

“It was really a home for wayward boys,” he acknowledges. “We weren’t treated badly, though. ” He quickly rose to the top of the student leadership.

The Army sent Don to the 14th Regimental Combat Team in Carson, CO where he learned combat infiltration skills.

“That meant snow skiing and snowshoeing in the winter and mountain climbing in the summer. We had Swiss instructors who taught us rope skills, how to cross canyons and rappel down cliffs. We bivouacked on the snow in mountain tents in the winter. In the summer pack mules carried our supplies.”

Of course, they did not have ski lifts to get them to the top of the mountain. They had to ‘herring-bone’ step to the summit. Falling while on skis could cause serious injury – this was in the days before quick release bindings.

Sgt. Don Maehenbrock when he was a U.S. Army instructor in Germany in the early 1950s.

“When the Korean War started, I wanted to go,” Don remembers. Instead he was sent to an anti-aircraft unit in New Jersey and then to Germany where he went to NCO school and became an instructor. “I was disappointed I didn’t get to go to Korea. At the time I didn’t realize how lucky I was.”

In Munich, Germany, Don taught radio procedures and courses such Psychological Aspects of a Soldier.

“The first one-hour sessions lasted about 10 minutes because I wasn’t used to talking to a group, but I eventually relaxed and enjoyed it.”

Among his students were Belgian and Dutch soldiers. Don often held impromptu evening classes in the barracks to help them.

Back in the States after discharge, he joined an Army buddy in Washington state as mate on a two-man commercial salmon fishing boat. One day, while out to sea, Don had an appendicitis attack. Using a trick he had learned in the Army, he laid down on the ice in one of the fish bins, keeping his stomach cold until the pain subsided a few hours later.

“I still have my appendix,” he says proudly.

But, prone to seasickness, Don quit the fishing business and worked in construction, eventually returning to Bridgeport. He married in 1956, used the GI Bill to study drafting and, two years later, passed the tests to join the city fire department where he spent the next 20 years.

With the firefighters he experienced his share of tragedy including children and comrades killed, as well as people thankful for their service.

Villager Don Maehenbrock spent 20 years as a firefighter in Bridgeport, Conn.

“I rescued one guy who was badly burned but survived. Months later he showed up at the firehouse with a big cake to show his thanks.”

Among other business interests Don also ran a painting company and a drafting service while fighting fires. That was followed by a stretch operating a restaurant and bar, and time with the New Haven sheriff’s department that often involved transporting prisoners from the local jail to a state penitentiary. He later became Building Supervisor for Court Operations with the judicial force until retiring in 1995.

After the death of his wife he married Kathy and they moved to Hope Sound, Florida near Port St. Lucie.

“I’m so fortunate,” Don says. “We’ve been married for 30 years. Kathy is my soulmate.”

Between them they have seven children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. They moved to the Village of Belvedere to escape the threat of hurricanes along the coast.

Much of Don’s life has also been involved in fraternal and service organizations including Shriners, the Masonic Lodge and the VFW, in Connecticut and Florida. He became a Master Mason in 1968, Lodge Master in 1975 and served as president of the Past Master’s Club among other honors. He headed Shriner’s Oriental Bands and played the musette – a woodwind instrument similar to an oboe – and later switched to the tom-tom drum.

He was elected commander of the VFW post 10132 in Hope Sound and helped raise membership from 900 to 1,300.

“We had five alternating crews that catered dinners to raise money to expand the Post facilities.”

“I learned how to cook at the restaurant and Kathy is a wonderful cook.”

Together Don and Kathy have catered many spaghetti dinners and Octoberfest celebrations as fund raisers for their church and other organizations. He admits that, now in their mid-eighties, the volunteer catering work has to slow down.

Don reckons that “For $100 I can make twelve gallons of spaghetti sauce and buy 14 pounds of pasta and make dinner for 100 people. When they sell tickets to the dinner the organization can make $800 or more. That’s much better than just giving them $100 cash.”

John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. Learn more at www.GoMyStory.com.

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