PADUCAH — There’s a lot Lawrence T. Durbin remembers about his younger years, and it doesn’t take much to reach back through the decades and pull out details.
Like a ticket for running a stop sign that cost him $2.40, or specific traits of some of the horses he worked with on the family farm, a fight he got in while living in western Iowa or learning swear words from customers in his dad’s blacksmith shop — and “getting my butt whooped.”
Most of Durbin’s memories center around the St. John’s area near Paducah, where he lived his whole life outside of a stint in Iowa and the time he served in the army in World War II.
Durbin turned 100 on Sunday, and celebrated Saturday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Paducah.
Raised in a family of 10, Durbin would end up with 10 children of his own — one from his first marriage and five from his second wife’s first marriage (both of their first spouses died) — and four the couple had together. When his first wife died, in April of 1968 as the family recalls, Durbin said she wrote him a letter.
“She left a letter telling me … ‘you bury me a nice burial and then you find you a good woman,’ ” adding with tears in his eyes looking at his wife, Dorothy, “and I found her.”
Durbin recalls a lot from the four years he served in the Army’s 99th Infantry Division between 1942 and 1946, including active combat in the Battle of the Bulge — “the worst I’ve ever experienced.”
Durbin said his company was setting up and camouflaging equipment when someone they believed to be from headquarters but later turned out to be a spy told them the operation had been canceled and they had to pull out. Upon returning to their captain, they were told to get back where they had been.
“When we got back down there it was terrible. They started throwing shells from both sides and we were trying to dodge it,” he said, recalling how another Army division was completely “wiped out.”
Durbin was honored with Paducah’s Distinguished Veteran Award in 2018.
After the war, coming back home, Durbin worked professionally as a mechanic but also kept a farm.
His advice to anyone who’ll take it? “Mind your own business and help your neighbor.”
His stepdaughter, Kathy Posch, remembered the life lesson slightly differently, as “work hard and help your neighbor.”
“It’s that ‘work hard’ in my opinion that’s why he’s where he is now.”
Durbin’s oldest son, Louis Durbin, said his dad still stays on the go as much as possible.
“Sometimes he acts like he’s 100 and sometimes he acts like he’s about 35,” he said.
Posch said one of the things that struck her most was that, even in a blended family, no one was made to feel different, and no one used the “step” prefix.
“It was always ‘first daddy’ and ‘second daddy,’ and he always treated us with the same love, and the siblings were all just siblings.”
Louis Durbin said though his dad isn’t shy, he’s not usually one for big parties, so he was surprised at how much his dad loved his 100th.
“He loved this party. He thought it was just the greatest party he’s ever had.”
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