LOWER MACUNGIE TOWNSHIP, Pa. \u2014 Four generations of family gathered this Father\u2019s Day to celebrate Paul Savary\u2019s 100th birthday, honoring a century of life marked by service, sacrifice and devotion to family.<\/p>\n
Although Savary\u2019s actual birthday is June 25, his daughter, Deborah Varney, said the family chose to celebrate on Father\u2019s Day as a way to recognize his role as a father, grandfather and great-grandfather.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was always a hard-working individual and just put family first and raised me that way. To get a career. Work hard at it and you will succeed,\u201d Varney said.<\/p>\n
For Savary, spending the day surrounded by family meant everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see a lot of happiness in the kids here. They’re enjoyable to watch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Family has remained central throughout Savary\u2019s life, including honoring the memory of his older brother, Charles Savary Jr., an Army private killed at age 19 on Aug. 30, 1944, during the Battle for Brest in World War II.<\/p>\n
After his brother\u2019s death, Savary, who was serving in the Navy, was kept out of combat under a military policy designed to prevent the last surviving son of a family from being sent into further combat.<\/p>\n
Charles Savary Jr. was buried in France, where he was killed.<\/p>\n
It took Savary more than 60 years to travel to France and visit his brother\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n
The trip was a deeply emotional moment for him and later led to him receiving medals and memorabilia in honor of his brother\u2019s service.<\/p>\n
Now nearly 100, Savary continues to be a regular presence at family events across the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe still comes to a lot of their sporting events, dance concerts, birthday parties, any type of celebration we can get him to,\u201d Varney said.<\/p>\n
Savary\u2019s life has included military service, decades with family, and honoring those who sacrificed for their country.<\/p>\n
As for his secret to reaching 100, Savary offered a simple answer: Belief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER MACUNGIE TOWNSHIP, Pa. \u2014 Four generations of family gathered this Father\u2019s Day to celebrate Paul Savary\u2019s 100th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,5114,433,434],"class_list":["post-224948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-instagram","tag-lehigh-county","tag-northampton-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}