{"id":144116,"date":"2026-01-22T03:46:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/144116\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T03:46:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:46:06","slug":"local-world-war-ii-veteran-celebrates-100th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/144116\/","title":{"rendered":"Local World War II veteran celebrates 100th birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) &#8212; A local World War II veteran was the life of the party as he celebrated a big birthday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Vern Schmidt turned 100 years old today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Reedley native was amazed as people from all over gathered at his retirement community in Northeast Fresno.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Vern says he&#8217;s blessed and proud to have served his country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;I&#8217;ve been overseas, I&#8217;ve been in seven countries over there, this is still number one, you can&#8217;t beat this country, there&#8217;s a lot of bad things, but in my heart I love the good stuff, that&#8217;s how I try to live,&#8221; Vern said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">You can read about Vern&#8217;s journey from the Valley to the battlefields of Europe in the book <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hero-Advocate-All-Others-Remembered\/dp\/B0DQB7DCZK\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">&#8220;A Hero and Advocate for All Others&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He&#8217;ll be taking part in a book signing event on Friday at 3 p.m. at the Clovis Veterans Memorial District&#8217;s Community Heritage Center.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">All proceeds benefit the Central Valley Honor Flight.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) &#8212; A local World War II veteran was the life of the party as he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[72163,112,114,113,294,7780,4001],"class_list":{"0":"post-144116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-72163","9":"tag-fresno","10":"tag-fresno-headlines","11":"tag-fresno-news","12":"tag-timely","13":"tag-veteran","14":"tag-world-war-ii"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}