Hero and legend, Richard Overton, America’s oldest World War II veteran and the oldest man in the United States, died Thursday afternoon, December 27, at the age of 112.
Overton would have been 113 on May 11, 2019 but the veteran had been hospitalized with pneumonia, his family said.
Overton volunteered for the Army starting in 1942 and served with the 188th Aviation Engineer Battalion, an all-black unit that served on various islands in the Pacific.
“He was there at Pearl Harbor when the battleships were still smoldering. He was there at Okinawa. He was there at Iwo Jima, where he said. ‘I only got out of there by the grace of God,'” former President Barack Obama said while honoring Overton at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in 2013.
