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Memorial Day comes 'round each year, and he wades deeper and deeper into South Hills Hebrew Cemetery, sticking flags in the dirt by markers that weren't there the year before.
As fellow World War II veterans pass on, 88-year-old Cohen finds himself on lonely ground: He's the last active member in Post 205 of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA.
"It's a skeleton post," he said. "I'm it."
Veterans organizations across the country are watching their memberships dwindle as the greatest generation slips away.
Elder vets tried to recruit newbies, Cohen says, but the men who returned from Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East formed their own fraternities.
"There was no new blood coming in," Cohen said.
He served two years in the Pacific as a private with the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He felt lucky to return safely to Pennsylvania in 1945.
Some friends didn't come back. In his wallet, Cohen carries a photo of a dear childhood friend from Wilkes-Barre. Pilot Eugene L. Rosner was shot down over Cologne, Germany, in July 1942.
A clutch of Jewish veterans of the Civil War began the first Hebrew Union Veterans group in 1896 to protest allegations that Jews hadn't served in battle. (More than 8,000 Jews donned Confederate gray or Union blues.)
In its heyday during the 1950s and '60s, Post 205 counted close to 50 members, Cohen
The men met monthly, gathered for drinks and chatted. They furnished the flags for the two local synagogues and prayed the Mourner's Kaddish for the dead on Memorial Day.
They successfully lobbied the York City School Board to name a school for one of their own: Alexander D. Goode Elementary School honors the York rabbi and chaplain who in 1943 gave up his life jacket to others as his torpedoed troop ship sank in the North Atlantic.
The vets' wives kept busy, too. The Women's Auxiliary became active in the community. Perhaps most notable was their
effort to help establish the Bell Club for people recently released from psychiatric hospitals (now Bell Socialization Services Inc.).
Over the years, attendance at post meetings dropped off, Cohen said. The crowd at the annual Memorial Day service dwindled, and the list of dead Cohen read aloud grew longer.
He has kept open the post treasury. About 10 vets still pay their dues, but most have retired to Florida. From there, they can't assist with the post's most important duties -- honoring the memory of the dead and shielding their graves from neglect.
Each May, Cohen and his wife, Toby, collect 90 to 100 flags from the county veterans affairs office and spend a day putting the flags out at South Hills.
As the couple aged, they worried: Who would mind the veterans' graves when they are gone?
Cohen believes he's found a caretaker in Jewish Family Services, whose leaders have pledged to keep the tradition alive with the help of a local Jewish youth group.
"That's our intent -- to be able to make sure it gets done even when he's no longer able to do it," said Jessica Brein, project coordinator for Jewish Family Services.
Several youth helped the Cohens put the flags out Monday, and JFS located a bugler to play taps at Sunday's 11 a.m. memorial.
There, in a 20-minute remembrance, the post's last commander will salute the fallen, the departed and the heroic dead, and conclude with a prayer. It ends:
"May they rest in peace, and their memory be a blessing to all of us. Amen."
771-2024; mburke@ydr.com
IF YOU GO
What: Grave Decoration Service by the Alexander D. Goode Post No. 205 of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA
When: 11 a.m. Sunday
Where: South Hills Hebrew Cemetery off Star Cross Road in York Township
ON THE WEB
Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, www.jwv.org
National Museum of Jewish American Military History, www.nmajm h.org
