'He touched so many hearts' Area's last Pearl Harbor survivor dies at age 89

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AMESBURY - Robert Antell lived through the horrors that marked the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and as a Navy machinist aboard the USS Aaron Ward, he withstood the barrage of six kamikaze planes on May 3, 1945.

A member of the "greatest generation," too humble to have ever referred to himself as such, he never turned down a request to lead the Pledge of Allegiance for Amesbury's Veterans Day service or to speak to students at his alma mater, Amesbury High School, about the fateful day that launched the United States into World War II.

Antell died Tuesday at the age of 89 after a long battle with diabetes. He is the last of a small group of local servicemen to have survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and for all he gave to the war effort and to his community upon returning home, his passing is being mourned across Amesbury.

"We loved, loved Bob," said Amesbury Veterans Agent Kristin Larue yesterday afternoon. "We just loved him. He touched so many hearts."

Described as a person tough enough to have survived the inhumanity of war and a man with a love of life and a fantastic sense of humor, Antell had spoken often to local groups of his experiences waking up aboard a Navy ship on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, to the sound of bombs and the smell of smoke all around him. Right up to the end, it remained vivid in his mind - the image of a Japanese plane careening out of control and on fire toward a local hospital, the sight of smoke rising from Ford Island and the harbor, the USS Arizona sinking to watery depths, and plucking the wounded and the dead from the burning water onto a 35-foot pilot boat.

"Bob Antell was an American original," said Paul Jancewicz, an Amesbury high school teacher who looked to Antell as a father figure of sorts and often called upon him to speak to his high school students about war experiences.

"I'd say he's a bona fide hero," said his son David Antell. "He had a fan club everywhere he went. I swear he did."

Antell said his father joined the Navy in 1939 "to get three square meals and a warm place to sleep," but he got much more than that - spending much of his time on the water after the United States became embroiled in World War II. When he woke to discover the U.S. was under attack, he set about dousing fires at a local hospital, transporting mortars for a counter-offensive, then taking to the harbor in a long boat to rescue soldiers and retrieve the fallen.

"A lot of guys were just locked in their barracks because they didn't know what was going on," said David Antell of his father's action following the attack.

"Everything was mass confusion, and everything you did, you did on your own initiative," said Robert Antell in an interview with the Daily News in 2006. "Whatever you thought was the right thing to do. Some of us went to help the wounded. There were men covered with oil and burnt. Other groups of us laid fire lines and put the fires out."

"They just took action," David Antell said. "They don't think they were heroes. They just did it."

Robert Antell served aboard the USS Chester at Pearl Harbor, the USS Houston and the USS Aaron Ward, the ship that sustained calamitous damage when it was attached by six kamikaze planes during a major offensive by the United States against Japan in 1945, a few months before the war ended.

For his efforts aboard the Aaron Ward, where he has recalled for many how his clothing was literally blown off his body, his eardrums punctured, and his eyebrows burned off, Antell received the Presidential Unit Citation, a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

Then he came home, beginning the struggle to adapt to domestic life after experiencing what few in Amesbury could ever know. Antell became an Amesbury police officer and spoke often of his high school days playing football at the stadium that would one day bear the name of Jimmy Landry - a classmate of Antell's who was entombed in the hull of the USS Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack.

"Perhaps his greatest tales were of football buddies with whom he'd accomplished so much on the sporting fields," Jancewicz said. "Those were the great victories about which he loved to reminisce ... men battling men without the dire outcomes he'd seen later in his life."

He served for 37 years on the police force, earning a reputation for being a fair, but tough, cop who, after what he'd been through, was less afraid of entering a tense standoff than most others.

"My view of my father was that he was about 8 foot 6 and had a uniform," David Antell said. "People didn't mess with him."

He was proud of the fact that he once issued a parking ticket to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and to then-Gov. Endicott Chub Peabody, said Antell, who struggled as sons sometimes do to see the merits of his tough-as-nails father until later on in life.

"I wasted a lot of years, but at the end we were buds," Antell said of his father's last years of life, which he said mirrored the life of the man who survived history's toughest battles.

"How come I'm still here - I'm supposed to be dead," he'd say in his final days, which weren't expected to number more than three after he stopped dialysis.

"He lived 17 days without dialysis," said Antell explaining how his father would open his eyes in disbelief that he were still here. "What the hell am I still doing here?" he'd say with a chuckle, Antell said. "He was a riot right up to the end."

Robert Antell's wake will be held tomorrow, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Rogers Funeral Home in Amesbury, where a number of well-wishers are expected to attend. A graveside service will be held in late spring at St. Mary's Cemetery, Storey Avenue, Newburyport.

Antell will be remembered again this spring during the Memorial Day ceremony he rarely missed as a veteran, Larue said. His service will live on forever because of how willing he was to share his stories with the people of Amesbury, she said.

"I think about it all the time," Robert Antell often said. "Every day I close my eyes and I am there. I can see it like it was yesterday."

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