Leonard G. 'Bud' Lomell, 91; Awarded Silver Star, Bronze Star, DSM
Bill Schenley
Highly decorated veteran with a chapter dedicated to his D-Day effforts in
Brokaw book, and a local monument honoring him
Photo: http://tinyurl.com/6arfxga
FROM: The BrickPatch ~
By Catherine Galioto, Don Bennett, and Adam Hochron
A local legend many called a hero for his World War II efforts died at the
age of 91 yesterday.
World War II veteran and Silver Star recipient Leonard G. 'Bud' Lomell died
of natural causes in Toms River March 1.
"He was a great friend of all of us and a hero of D-Day, a person of great
character,'' said Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari.
"Bud was a very kind man, we miss him,'' said Freeholder Gerry P. Little,
recalling how Lomell served in the Second Ranger Battalion, charged with
silencing German shore batteries during the D-Day invasion.
He found the shore artillery hidden in an orchard, braved German fire, and
disabled the guns using thermite grenades. Little said Lomell was awarded
the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Distinguished Service Medal for his actions
during the invasion.
His descriptions of what happened have been included in History Channel
accounts and in Tom Brokaw's book, "The Greatest Generation,'' which devoted
an entire chapter to Lomell.
American Historian Stephen Ambrose recognized Lomell as the single
individual - other than Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower - most responsible for the
success of D-Day, which he wrote in his biographies of the President. In
1994 Lomell was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame.
He was born in Brooklyn but in his youth his family relocated to Point
Pleasant Beach, where he graduated from Point Pleasant Beach High School.
Before his graduation from Tennessee Wesleyan College in 1941, he served as
the college's student newspaper editor and was a fraternity president. In
the year between graduation and enlistment in the Army, where he initially
served with the 76th Infrantry Division before volunteering for the Rangers,
Lomell returned to New Jersey to work as a brakeman for freight trains.
Lomell was 24, when as First Sergeant was the acting commander for the 2nd
Ranger Battalion's D Company, making a major impact on D-Day when he
uncovered German guns to be used againstOmaha and Utah Beach, and worked to
disable them.
On Dec. 7, 1944, his actions leading a command up a hill that served as a
German command center to overtake would later earn Lomell his Silver Star.
It would be Nov. 9, 2007, during a ceremony in Toms River.
A monument to Lomell is among Veterans Park, Point Pleasant Beach, depicting
a grapnal hook used to destroy the guns at Point Du Hoc. It was dedicated
Dec. 4, 1999.
In Toms River, the town hall includes the Leonard Lomell Meeting Room, which
was dedicated in 2008 where many of the countless awards, plaques, and
proclamations Lomell was given are on display.
After the war, Lomell embarked on a career in law, becoming founder and
senior member of the law firm of Lomell, Muccifori, Adler, Ravaschiere &
Amabile, later simply known as the Lomell Law Firm in Toms River.
The firm of Leyden, Caportoro is the successor to Lomell Law Firm, and
details in its history: "We are extremely proud of Mr. Lomell's lifetime
achievements and in 2000 the firm name was shortened to Lomell Law Firm in
his honor. Mr. Lomell started the firm in 1957 after completing law school
under the G.I. Bill. He started as a sole practitioner specializing in
insurance defense for carriers."
Countless awards were bestowed on Lomell during his lifetime, including an
honorary Doctor of Humanities degree in 2007 from Monmouth University, Long
Branch.
He also held a variety of business positions, serving on boards of
directors. They include a director of The First National Bank of Toms River
and a director and vice-president of Statewide Bancorp. He was a director of
the South Jersey Title Insurance Co., Atlantic City.
Civic work was a large part of Lomell's life, having served on the Dover
Township Board of Education and a director of the Ocean County Historical
Society.
He was also a president of the Garden State Philharmonic Symphony Society; a
chairman of the Dover Township Juvenile Conference Committee; and a member
of the Community Memorial Hospital building committee.
In recent years Lomell remained prominent locally and nationally for the
number of interviews he gave and public speaking events he participated in,
on the subject of his WWII efforts.
Back in the summer of 2009 Lomell served as the honorary captain of the
Ocean County squad at the annual All Shore Classic Football game. It was at
the same game that former Point Boro Coach Al Saner was inducted into the
Shore Football Coaches Hall of Fame. Prior to graduating from Point Beach
with the class of 1937 Lomell had played football and baseball for the
Garnet Gulls.
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Photo: http://tinyurl.com/6k5qtq4
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Leonard Lomell, World War II hero from Toms River, dies at 91
FROM: The Newark Star-Ledger ~
By MaryAnn Spoto
TOMS RIVER -
He was a 24-year-old staff sergeant and platoon leader with the Army's 2nd
Ranger Battalion, trained to scale the impossibly sheer, 100-foot-high
cliffs of Pointe du Hoc.
He was shot in the side before he even reached the beach, nearly drowned as
he left the landing craft, ducked heavy fire, yet still managed to climb
hand-over-hand on ropes that were rocketed up to the top, in a nearly
suicidal mission to silence a deadly coastal gun emplacement threatening the
lives of thousands.
And he was once described by the late historian Stephen Ambrose as the
single individual, other than Dwight Eisenhower, most responsible for the
success of D-Day.
Leonard "Bud" Lomell, a hero in the fierce battle that turned the tide of
World War II, and memorialized in Tom Brokaw's book, "The Greatest
Generation," died peacefully Tuesday afternoon, surrounded by his family at
home in Toms River, close friends of the family said today.
He was 91 years old.
"He was one of the greatest men of the greatest generation,'' said J. Mark
Mutter, the township historian. "He was so typical of that generation and
put his medals and uniform in the attic after the war and built a whole new
world.''
Lomell was the stuff of legends.
Born in Brooklyn, he moved with his parents to Point Pleasant Borough on the
Jersey Shore, where he graduated from Point Pleasant Beach High School. He
would work summers at Jenkinson's Beach, before going away to Tennessee
Wesleyan College on an academic scholarship.
After the war broke out. Lomell joined the Army, volunteering for the elite
Ranger unit.
When the planning for the invasion of Europe got underway, Lomell's
battalion was assigned a key target for the success of the Allied
Expeditionary Force: five giant coastal guns believed to be stationed by the
Germans atop Pointe du Hoc, between Utah and Omaha beaches, on the coast of
France.
The guns, with a range of 10 to 15 miles, were perched atop 100-foot cliffs
and posed a threat to both U.S. ships offshore and the soldiers landing on
the beach.
The Rangers' task of destroying the guns was considered one of the most
dangerous of the invasion - what most considered a mission few would
survive - requiring they climb up a sheer cliff by rope, under unrelenting
fire, and knock out the well-defended gun emplacements there.
Failure would mean the loss of countless lives; possibly the collapse of the
invasion itself.
Leading up to D-Day, the Rangers trained at Fort Dix and later in the
mountains of Tennessee. They conducted amphibious landing drills in Florida.
They did exercises at the Isle of Wight once they arrived in England. And on
the morning of June 6, 1944, Lomell was in a landing craft commanding a
Ranger platoon, headed for Normandy, starring up the cliffs bristling with
machine-gun fire.
"As I went off the landing craft as the first sergeant, loaded with gear and
supplies, I was shot through the right side. I was the first one wounded,"
he recalled in a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose.
He stepped off the ramp at the front and immediately found himself in water
over his head. "When I bopped up, my guys grabbed me and pulled me up," he
remembered. "And then we hit the beach."
Lomell said the wound burned a little, but hadn't hit anything vital, and
they rushed to the cliffs, where the rocket-propped grappling hooks were
launched, trailing long lengths of climbing ropes. Loaded with gear and
explosives, they began scaling the sheer wall, hand-over-hand, while the
Germans on top were desperately trying to cut the ropes or shoot them.
Those on the ropes couldn't shoot back because they were climbing, hoping
only for covering fire from the ground. Many were hit and killed or wounded.
Others fell to their deaths.
Those who finally were able to reach the top overwhelmed the Germans, and
found a surprise waiting. The guns had secretly been moved. The artillery
barrels that appeared so clearly on U.S. reconnaissance photos were nothing
more than telephone poles set at an angle to disguise the real location of
the weapons.
Lomell said it was critical to find the missing guns. As the battle raged
below on the beaches, he and two other Rangers followed a set of tracks
leading inland from the cliff, where they found all five carefully hidden in
an apple orchard, left unguarded.
Using grenades and other explosives, Lomell and the others managed to
disable them, eluding discovery and rendering the coastal defense guns
useless.
It's a story that's been well documented in books and films. Historians
recount it as one of the most important keys to Allied success that day. But
for Lomell, it was less a day of heroics than one of loss.
"There was a lot of death," he said in a 2007 interview with The
Star-Ledger. "I lost half my guys. What more is there to know?"
Six months later, in another furious battle at Castle Hill in the Huertgen
Forest on the German-Belgian border, Lomell was wounded again - in an action
for which he was cited for bravery more than 60 years later, when he
belatedly received a Silver Star.
After the war, Lomell graduated from Rutgers University Law School. Putting
his war days behind him, he married the former Charlotte Ewart, his wife of
64 years, raised three daughters - Georgine, Pauline and Renee - and built a
successful law practice.
"He was totally honest and upfront with everyone he dealt with,'' said his
former partner Robert Fall, now a retired Appellate Division judge. "He had
the highest character in the best sense that you could have.''
For all the personal experiences Lomell shared with his business partners,
he rarely talked about his war experiences. Fall, who decades later attended
the same grammar and high schools as Lomell, said his friend was hailed
locally as a hero, but did not earn national recognition until 1985 when
television news anchor Tom Brokaw came to him for a book about World War II
heroes. A chapter of that book, "The Greatest Generation,'' was devoted to
Lomell.
"We were all his law partners for years. We never knew how significant a
role he had played in D-Day and the aftermath of D-Day until Brokaw decided
to write his book,'' Fall said. "Bud never talked about that stuff because
he was one of the most modest guys you'd ever want to meet.''
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Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Lomell