Four World War II Veterans Over 100 Honored in Ocala, and the Stories They Came to Tell

Michael Baker did not expect any of this. Not the applause, not the room full of strangers, and definitely not the number on his last birthday cake.

“It feels great. I never thought it would happen. I never thought I’d get this old,” the 101-year-old Navy veteran told WCJB after Friday’s World War II Veteran Summit in Ocala, Florida.

Baker was one of four men at the front of the room, and every one of them had crossed the century mark. Together they represented something the country is running out of fast: people who can tell you, firsthand, what it was like when the whole world was at war and America answered.

A Room Full of History in Marion County

The summit was organized by the Marion County chapter of Veterans Helping Veterans USA and held on Friday, October 2, at the group’s location in Silver Springs, just outside Ocala. About 100 people came. Seating was first come, first served, and the format was simple: the veterans told their stories, then took questions from the crowd.

According to WCJB, the four men talked about the hard moments and the lighter ones, and all of them said they were at peace with the lives they had built. No speeches about glory. Just four old men remembering, out loud, so the rest of us would know.

Here is who was in those chairs.

Michael Baker, 101: The Storekeeper Who Crossed the Equator

Baker served eight years in the U.S. Navy, as a Storekeeper Third Class during World War II and again during the Korean War. A storekeeper keeps a ship supplied: food, parts, ammunition, everything a crew needs to keep fighting thousands of miles from home. It is not the job they make movies about, but no ship sails without it.

He told WUFT that three weeks after enlisting, he had orders that took him through Boston, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Philadelphia before he shipped out through the Panama Canal. On August 11, 1943, aboard the USS Oceanus, he earned his shellback certificate, the Navy’s traditional honor for sailors crossing the equator for the first time, on the way to Bora Bora and the Tahitian islands.

He later spent more than a year based in Sydney, Australia. Eighty years on, the memories have not faded. “I can pull it up any time,” he said. “It never goes away.”

Asked about the service itself, he did not hesitate: “I don’t regret it. I would do it again if I had to.”

When he came home, Baker did what so many of that generation did. He went to work and stayed there. He was a plumber, a bus driver and a postal worker. He still loves eating out and reads constantly, usually borrowing six to 12 books every time he visits the library. At his 101st birthday in September, his eldest daughter, Judi, who is 80, was there to celebrate. Representatives from the office of Congressman Randy Fine and Veterans Helping Veterans USA executive director Todd Belknap presented him with a Certificate of Honor and Valor.

Norman Schutt, 100: 120 Ships and a Lucky Crossing

Norman Kenneth Schutt was born in Saginaw, Michigan, and served in the U.S. Merchant Marine from January 14, 1944, to August 15, 1945. He sailed on three different vessels hauling equipment and troops across the Atlantic to Europe.

If you want to understand what that meant, start with this: German U-boats spent years hunting exactly those ships. Merchant mariners were civilians who sailed into a war zone with cargo the Army could not fight without. Schutt described his first crossing to 352today plainly: “We were lucky when we went over, we had 120 ships in our convoy. But we made it.”

The service the country almost forgot

Schutt’s branch deserves a moment of its own. About 8,300 merchant mariners were killed in World War II and roughly 12,000 more were wounded, according to supporters of the Merchant Mariners of World War II Congressional Gold Medal Act, who describe it as the highest per capita casualty rate of any U.S. service in the war. Even so, merchant mariners were not granted veteran status until 1988, more than four decades after they came home. Men like Norman Schutt waited most of their adult lives for the government to call them what they were: veterans.

Schutt came from a family that served. He had three brothers in uniform during the war: one flew bombers over Europe and two served in Asia. After the war he joined the Michigan National Guard, serving in Company A of the 125th Infantry from December 1946 to June 1948.

Then he built a life. He owned a Texaco station, survived a heart attack and spent 50 years in the Port Charlotte area, where he became a serious fossil hunter and made shark tooth necklaces to sell at craft shows. He moved to Ocala recently to be closer to family.

When he turned 100 in March, he summed it up like a man who knows exactly how lucky he has been: “I’ve lived a charmed life, my life has been planned since day one.” He also said he is optimistic about where the country is heading. Coming from someone who watched it survive a world war, that means something.

Howard Mautner, 102: The Man Who Stood Up at the Tomb

Howard Mautner served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945 as an aircraft control tower operator in Italy, guiding planes in and out while the Allied campaign ground its way up the peninsula.

At 102, he is the oldest of the four, and in April he gave the people around him one of those moments nobody forgets. On April 25, 2026, Mautner flew to Washington with First Coast Honor Flight, one of 22 veterans on the trip, escorted by Todd Belknap of Veterans Helping Veterans USA, according to the Ocala Gazette.

The group visited the Air Force Memorial, the Marine Corps War Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. At Arlington National Cemetery, Mautner laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The plan was for him to stay in his wheelchair. He did not. He got up and walked forward to lay it himself, and then he stood and saluted while taps played.

“It was a wonderful, tremendous experience,” he said afterward.

If you have ever wondered what that generation is made of, there is your answer. At 102, he would not stay seated while honoring the fallen.

Carl Vollmer: The Fourth Chair

Carl Vollmer, also 100 or older, was the fourth veteran honored at the summit. Public details of his service were not available at publication time, and we will not guess at them. What matters is that he was there, answering questions, adding his voice to a conversation that is getting quieter every year.

If you know Carl Vollmer or his family and would like to share his story, Veterans Helping Veterans USA in Marion County is the right place to start.

The Math Nobody Wants to Do

About 16.4 million Americans served in World War II. According to the National WWII Museum, only about 30,607 are still living in 2026, less than 0.2 percent. Florida, which drew so many of them in retirement, is home to roughly 2,506.

That is why events like the Ocala summit are not just nice. They are urgent. Every story that gets told in a room like that is a story that does not disappear when the veteran does. Some of those stories end up in archives. Some end up in the heads of a teenager who came with a grandparent and will remember, decades from now, the old sailor who crossed the equator in 1943.

We have seen how much these stories still move people. Just this weekend we covered the 65 Medal of Honor recipients gathering in Detroit, and before that the return of a teenage Korean War soldier who came home after 76 years. The common thread is simple: the country still wants to say thank you. The window to do it in person is closing.

How You Can Honor Them Now

You do not need to organize a summit. A few practical things make a difference:

• Ask and listen. If there is a World War II, Korea or Vietnam veteran in your family or your church, sit down with a phone and record their story. The Library of Congress Veterans History Project accepts those interviews.
• Support the groups doing the work. Veterans Helping Veterans USA and the Honor Flight network rely on volunteers and donations to get veterans to Washington and to events like this one.
• Show up. When your town hosts a ceremony like the one in Ocala, go. A full room tells a veteran that what he did still matters.

Michael Baker said he never thought he would get this old. The rest of us should be grateful he did, and that he, Norman Schutt, Howard Mautner and Carl Vollmer were willing to spend a Friday afternoon telling us what it cost to keep this country free. We build legacies by listening to the people who built ours.