Lawrence Brooks
Born September 12, 1909
Born and raised in Norwood, Luisiana in a family with 15 kinds. Lawrence was drafted at the age of 31 and ended up cooking red beans and rice halfway around the world as part of the 91st Engineers Battalion in the Pacific Theater, cleaning uniforms and shining shoes for three officers. He achieved the rank of Private 1st Class.
Brooks remembers he had a close encounter with death when the C-47 cargo plane he was on, "lost" an engine and they had to toss out much of the cargo. The plane did not have enough parachutes, "but we made it". Jumping in a foxhole whenever Japanese war planes were flying over was also pretty common for our cook.
“My mother and father always raised me to love people, and I don’t care what kind of people they are,” he said. “And you mean to tell me, I get up on these people and I got to go kill them? Oh, no, I don’t know how that’s going to work out.”
Father of five children, 13 grandchildren and 22 great grandchildren, Lawrence says “I had some good times and I had some bad times. I just tried to put all the good ones and the bad ones together and tried to forget about all of them.”
Brooks says his military years taught him to straighten up, so he did his best to eat right and stay healthy. He never enjoyed the taste of alcohol and the way liquor burned his throat. “I don't like hurting my body,” he says.
The oldest World War 2 veteran turned 111 years old yesterday. He says the secret to a life well-lived, is to “serve God, and be nice to people.”