“I love this girl, she’s pretty special,” said Terens, who has been dating Swerlin since 2021. To demonstrate their penchant for dancing, they asked Siri to play “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, then jumped, twirled, and twirled around like teenagers at home.
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“He’s an Array guy,” Swerlin said.
“And my God, he’s the best kisser,” she said.
World War II veteran Harold Terens, 100, right, and Jeanne Swerlin, 96, laugh as they speak in an interview on Feb. 29, 2024, in Boca Raton, Fla. Terens will be revered throughout France as part of the country’s honor. . Celebrating Débarquement. De Plus’ 80th anniversary, the couple will tie the knot on June 8 at a chapel near the beaches where U. S. forces landed. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
The couple, both widowers, grew up in New York City: she in Brooklyn, he in the Bronx. They laugh about how they experienced World War II differently. She was in the best school and would faint with foot soldiers who gave her souvenirs of the war. such as dog tags, knives, and even a gun, to impress her.
Terens enlisted in 1942 and was sent to Britain the following year, attached to a squadron of four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighters as a radio repair technician. Terens said all of his first pilots died in the war.
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“I enjoyed all those guys. Young men. The average age is 26,” he said.
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Terens helped arrange planes returning from France so they could be ready for battle. He said some of his company’s pilots died that day.
Terens went to France 12 days later, helping to send newly captured Germans and newly liberated American POWs to England. To him, the Germans seemed satisfied because they wanted war. However, the Americans were brutalized by their Nazi captors for months. if not years.
“They are in a state of stupor,” he said.
He then embarks on a secret project, though he doesn’t know its fate. His planes flew across North Africa before landing in Tehran. There he survived a robbery that left him naked in the desert and fearing death until the U. S. An army police patrol passed by.
He learned the main points of his secret project when he landed at a Soviet airfield in Ukraine. Under a new strategy, U. S. bombers would fly out of Britain to attack Axis targets in Eastern Europe. They didn’t have enough fuel to go back, so they had to fly to the USSR. Terens’ task was to feed the crews and treat the wounded before they returned home with their planes refueled.
Terens soon contracted dysentery, which nearly killed him. In another incident that nearly led to an accident, a British waiter refused to serve him after the mandatory last time, despite his pleas to give him just one more drink. Moments after being evicted, a German rocket destroyed the pub.
After Nazism in May 1945, Terens helped send the freed Allied prisoners to England before sending them back to the United States a month later.
He married his wife Thelma in 1948 and they had two daughters and a son. He was vice president of a British conglomerate in the United States. They moved from New York to Florida in 2006 after Thelma retired as a French teacher; She passed away in 2018 after 70 years of marriage. She has 8 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Swerlin married at age 21 and was a full-time mother of two women and a child before becoming a widow at 40. Her second husband died after 18 years of marriage. He then lived with Sol Katz for 25 years before his death in 2019. He has seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
It was Katz’s daughter, Joanne Schosheim, who brought him to Terens in 2021.
He met Terens when his children attended camp with their grandchildren years ago and they remain friends. She and a friend thought the two might get along, so they invited them to lunch.
“She gave my dad so much joy,” Schosheim said of Swerlin. “I didn’t need her to be alone. “
But after Thelma’s death, Terens was no longer interested in other women and saw Swerlin lightly.
“I didn’t even take a look at it. I didn’t even communicate with him,” she said.
“I looked at it. He looked at me,” Swerlin said, but “it didn’t look like anything. “
Despite this, Terens’ friend, Stanley Eisenberg, invited them to dinner the next night. Eisenberg wanted to see who his friend had fired.
Love at first sight.
“I noticed it lit up like that,” Eisenberg said.
Terens couldn’t communicate or eat, and that’s not his type.
“I said, ‘You’re in love,'” Eisenberg said. I’ve never felt those emotions before. ‘”
After that date, Swerlin claimed, Terens “didn’t give me a chance” to refuse. At 94 years old, she’s also in love.
“He introduced me to the world, ‘I need you to meet my girlfriend, honey,’ and I haven’t met him for over two days,” she said with a laugh. “Being in love isn’t just for young people. We have butterflies like everyone else. “
Terens proposed to her a few months ago, on his knees before Swerlin.
“She’s hysterical” with pleasure, he said.
“I thought it would help him, but he’s so macho,” she said.
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The couple and their families will travel to Paris at the end of May, where Terens and a handful of surviving World War II veterans will be honored. Of the 16 million U. S. veterans of World War II, only 120,000 remain, according to the government.
This will be the party of the fourth birthday of the Landing of Terens in France. Five years ago he won a medal from President Emmanuel Macron.
The families will then travel to the town of Carentan-les-Marais, where the couple plans to tie the knot on June 8 through Mayor Jean-Pierre Lhonneur in a chapel built in the 17th century. Lhonneur said that because of the U. S. sacrifice on D-Day, more American flags fly in the domain than French flags.
“Normandy is the 51st state,” he said.
Lhonor explained that legally he is only allowed to marry other people in the city, but he believes the local prosecutor will allow him to make an exception.
“It’s going to be exciting for us,” the mayor said.