Lifelong Friends

ART FISHMAN

ALAN MUSKOVITZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Veterans Day is always an extremely busy time for WWII Jewish War Veteran (JWV) Arthur “Art” Fishman. The 94-year old Oak Park resident’s calendar is filled with nonstop events.

His week in and around Veterans Day this year included participating in Detroit’s annual Veterans Day parade, attending the annual Veterans Shabbat service at Shaarey Zedek and representing the JWV at a ceremony at Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly. But it’s safe to say one additional gathering the week following Veterans Day turned out to be a more personal experience.

On Nov. 17, Art broke bread at a special lunch with two of his lifelong Michigan naval veteran buddies — Jack Stone and Marty Myers. The gathering was inspired by a phone conversation between Art and Jack during which Stone announced he was moving permanently to Florida. Over the years, Art had not seen Jack as frequently as Marty, so he knew the time was right for a reunion among these three sailors before Jack relocated to his new home.

The three men, all approaching their 95th birthdays, have a history dating back to when they were classmates at both Durfee Intermediate School and Central High School. This “Band of Sailors” stayed connected upon graduation when the three entered the Navy and began training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Illinois.

By some accounts, more than a million “Bluejackets,” or approximately one-third of the men trained in the Navy during WWII, went through Great Lakes.

At one time or another, all three sailors served in the Pacific. Stone and Myers would both ship off to Okinawa — Stone aboard the troop ship USS Riverside and Myers aboard the supply ship USS Ajax. Fishman was assigned to the USS Robinson as a Fireman 3rd Class and engineer apprentice, later joining the Yangtze River Patrol for mine sweeping duty at the port of Shanghai, China, among his several other assignments.

This trio of lifelong friends, whose lives in so many ways mirrored each other, would complete their service to their country and all would eventually be discharged within a five-week period during the summer of 1946.

Upon returning stateside, Art, Jack and Marty’s lives, for a time, would lead them in different directions and different cities. Eventually though, they all would return to Detroit where they would work, raise their families and renew the friendships they had forged since their childhood.

Many of those shared experiences would be recalled during Fishman, Stone and Myer’s Nov. 17 lunch date. It was an afternoon of reminiscing at a local restaurant, sharing their lifes’ journeys and recounting decades of experiences, from schoolyards to shipyards. It was a postVeterans Day reunion the trio won’t soon forget.