Combat not always part of a hero's past.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

MONROE - They are dying every day. Have been for years, at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, just like 400,000 of their brothers died in battle more than six decades ago.

Only these deaths are from old age, not bullets and bombs.

For many American men who are part of what Tom Brokaw labeled "The Greatest Generation," who fought in the greatest war of them all, or served in the military and were poised to fight for a war most all Americans backed, these are the final years.

And one day, probably 20 years or so from now, you'll read a story about the last living World War II veteran.

Eight days short of age 89, somehow still here after surviving years of heavy smoking, a heart attack and triple-bypass surgery, that's not likely to be a story, as this one is, about John Moody II.

And that's just fine with the man who has lived just south of here for the past 56 years, who was born Nov. 19, 1918, in Sallisaw, Okla., when what was to become known as Veterans Day itself was just eight days old after the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. Because like a lot of men, and some 350,000 women, who served during World War II, he didn't get the chance to fight for his country.

"I think it's a wonderful thing," says Moody, who still works daily, raking leaves or picking walnuts on his 13 acres, of Veterans Day. "They should be recognized. I just don't feel like I was part of it."

Much of his family - a wife of 66 years, three sons, three daughter-in-laws, nine grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren - are thankful for that.

He did his duty, he served his time, he was ready to go, and that's all that counts.

"He's earned it," daughter-in-law Darline Moody of Eugene says. "He's our hero."

Of the 16 million Americans who served in the United States Armed Forces during World War II, more than 75 percent have died. The youngest of them turned 80 this year, or are very close to it.

As of Sept. 30, 2006, an estimated 3,151,000 World War II veterans were still living, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a number that has undoubtedly shrunk by more than 407,000 if the more-than-a-thousand-a-day estimates are correct.

Asked if any remaining World War II veteran friends are still around, Moody, who served two years in the Coast Guard during the war and by a strange twist of fate was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, says: "All of 'ems gone."

After doctors five years ago told him he had two to six weeks to live because of congestive heart failure, Moody says with a laugh that he doesn't "have the least idea" why he is still here.

Probably stubbornness, his family says.

"Have you ever seen anyone who will do everything for everyone else, but won't take any help from anyone else?" says Moody's wife, Helen, the girl he eloped with back in October of 1941. "That's my husband."

And that was her husband's father, the original John Moody, born in Little Rock, Ark., in 1895, who dropped dead of what they said was a heart attack at age 46 helping build an American Indian reservation in Arizona.

"My dad would not ask for credit from anybody," says John Moody II, who operated John T. Moody and Sons Construction from 1963 to 1981, building churches and schools all over Lane and Benton counties, as well as remodeling several University of Oregon buildings. "And he would not buy anything on credit."

His father owned some land in Sallisaw, near the Arkansas border, raised cattle and grew crops, but the family had to travel back and forth to California while his dad looked for work during the dust bowl days of the 1920s and 1930s.

Moody remembers his dad working in the fields one day and losing his billfold, which contained an entire year's earnings of $120.

It's the only time he remembers seeing his father cry.

"We went hungry part of the time," recalls Moody, whose mother died at age 24 in California of an auto-immune disorder called pemphigus.

As a young man, Moody worked building dams in the West, including Parker Dam in Arizona.

Then, at age 20, he got a job with Pacific Naval Airbase Contractors building military bases in Hawaii and surrounding islands. He worked for 13 months on Midway Island, later the scene of one of the most spectacular battles of World War II, and then returned home to marry Helen.

Just weeks later, though, in early December of 1941, he and a buddy found themselves back in Honolulu to catch a boat to Johnston Atoll for another building project. But they missed the boat. By an hour. And there wasn't another one for a week.

That's why, on the morning of Dec. 7, they awoke with hangovers after a night of drinking to the deafening sounds and earth-shattering sensation of bombs hitting not far from where they had been sleeping.

"It was scary, but I never saw any panic," Moody recalls. "Everybody was wanting to help. Everybody was wanting to do something."

They spent the entire day piling sandbags on the beach, then stayed until February helping in any way they could.

"We stayed there and worked," Moody says. "There was no place else to go."

Upon returning home to his wife in Southern California, Moody knew it was time to join the service. He took a test to enter the Air Force but did not pass it. He ended up joining the Coast Guard and was stationed in Alameda, Calif., near San Francisco.

Three times he was scheduled to be shipped out to see combat. Three times his name was taken off the list at the last minute, he says. He believes it was because he was dishonorably discharged from the Civilian Conservation Corps, the 1930s work-relief program for young men from unemployed families. As a teenager in the program in Arizona, he had stolen food from a kitchen one time because he was hungry.

"Oh, yeah, I wanted to go," Moody says of seeing combat. "?'Cause all your friends was going. It was just so discouraging. Every man would like to test himself under fire, and I didn't get to."