Private funeral services have been set for former Scranton Mayor David Wenzel, a Vietnam War veteran who died Wednesday at age 80, according to the Neil W. Regan Funeral Home in Scranton, which is handling the arrangements.
Wenzel’s obituary will run in Tuesday’s edition of The Times-Tribune, funeral director Brendan Regan said.
Wenzel died at the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center in Scranton on the same night that the University of Scranton was honoring him with an inaugural Public Service Award. Ailing in recent years while a resident of the Merli center, Wenzel was not present to receive the Public Service Award bestowed on him by the Center for Ethics and Excellence in Public Service at the Weinberg Memorial Library. His wife, Janet, accepted the award on behalf of her husband.
The event had been planned for about a month to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Wenzel’s election as mayor of Scranton, on Nov. 5, 1985. Wenzel, a university alumnus, served one term as city mayor from 1986-1990. Wenzel was the 27th person to have served as mayor, and was the 30th mayor of the city in succession, as three prior mayors had each served two nonconsecutive tenures, according to a listing of city mayors and their years of service detailed in Wenzel’s 2006 book, “Scranton’s Mayors.”
Wenzel was in Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at the University of Scranton before graduating and being deployed to Vietnam. In early 1971, Wenzel stepped on a land mine and lost both legs above the knee, his left arm above the wrist, and eventually most sight in his left eye. He spent about a year in a hospital in Valley Forge recuperating. After the war, Wenzel went on to build a career that involved community service.