On Sept. 5, 1946, he married his high school sweetheart, Marilyn Jean Burnett, a love story that lasted 75 years before her death four years ago, then served 2 1/2 years in the U.S. Army, including five months in Europe during World War II.
Talk about a lucky man.
As Antenen sat in his house at Berkeley Square, the place still full of birthday cards, he talked about his late wife and the war.
As he did, he became quiet, his hands shook, and his eyes behind his glasses searched the room for the right words. But there are no words to express how much he misses his wife, the little girl he met in the fourth grade, and how he survived a war that claimed the lives of thousands of American servicemen.
“She was a wonderful girl,” he said of his wife, who planned a career in journalism before she started a family. “She was a jewel.”
When Marilyn’s family moved to Hamilton, she enrolled in the fourth grade at Madison Elementary School. She asked a classmate, Gayle Timberman Miller, a woman who became a lifelong friend, about that cute boy sitting near the front of the class.
That boy was Dan Antenen.
Or as we call him, Mr. Lucky.
Two years later, Antenen said they were “young lovers” these sixth-graders. By the time he was attending Roosevelt Junior High School and she was at Wilson Junior High, they had no contact.
They reunited halfway through their senior year at Hamilton High School when they sat next to each other in typing class.
Toward the end of 1942, months before they were to graduate, their stories took a turn when the military draft age lowered from 18 to 17 due to the casualties suffered during World War II.
All Hamilton High School senior boys were drafted and entered the military soon after graduating.
Diplomas one day. Rifles the next.
Due to Antenen’s high test scores, he was assigned to the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) that provided 12 months of college courses after infantry basic training.
But the program was canceled due to the number of soldiers killed in Italy.
Antenen served in the Army’s 20th Armored Division, including in Europe for five months. That division was prepared to invade Japan before the orders were stopped when the war ended.
That’s as close as Antenen got to heavy combat.
He often thinks of those who fought on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating.
Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day and the death totals between the allied casualties and Germans are estimated at nearly 20,000.
“It was just a bad scene,” Antenen, a history buff, said quietly.
After his military service, he attended the University of Cincinnati, and he and his wife were married at the Front Street Presbyterian Church.
They have three children, Steve Antenen, Mary McIlroy and Kate Vonder Bruegge, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Antenen owned Antenen Construction Co. that built additions onto most of the factories that gave Hamilton its industrial muscle and the city’s electric plant.
Vonder Bruegge called her father “the most brilliant” person she has ever met and said he could fix anything. She has always cherished time with her father, though he spent long hours at work when she was a child.
Now, with each passing day, she understands tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, especially when you’re 100 years old.
“It will be a very emotional, tragic day when we lose dad,“ she said on the phone from her Missouri home. ”We have been so blessed to have him with us still.”
McIlroy said her father loved to share his knowledge with his chilren.
“Dad was always happy to teach me about anything I wanted to know. I never met anyone who knew so much,“ she said. ”We explored, investigated, researched and learned with his help. In everything he did, Dad lived the motto, ‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.‘”
Living with that example, McIlroy said she learned to put in all the “effort and commitment it took to do things well and correctly, especially to eliminate any chance of harm to someone and to make it work for others as much as possible.”
Steve Antenen said growing up with his father meant gradually coming to appreciate what hard work and perseverance, intelligence and creativity, senses of humor and adventure, plus compassion and generosity look like when all “embodied in one person.”
“It was my great fortune,” he said.
Dan Antenen was asked what he thought about turning 100.
“It was just another day,” he said with a smile. “I take things as they come. I never gave it any thought.”
But he has thought about the time he spent in the Army during WWII. Sometimes, it seems like yesterday. Other times, he realizes it was 1944.
“I’m shocked that I was part of something from 80 years ago,” he said.
Toward the end of our hour interview, Antenen was asked what wisdom he could share with the rest of us.
Like he had earlier in the morning, he searched the room for the right words. This time he found them.
“You have to learn everything you can that’s put before you,” he said. “Why did they put it before you? They wanted you to learn. Don’t waste your life.”
And if all else fails, count on a little Lady Luck and gin.
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