The winter storm didn’t stop a World War II veteran from celebrating a very special birthday of 105 years.<\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 As the snow fell in Scranton, it called for a quiet birthday celebration just the way Joseph Anticoli wanted it.<\/p>\n
“Just a quiet time, nothing exciting going on. Just a plain birthday,” said Anticoli.<\/p>\n
At 105, Joe says there are no real secrets to growing old, but maybe the closest thing is here in his kitchen, where his wife still cooks dinner every night at 99.<\/p>\n
The two have been married for 74 years, meeting after his time in the service. “Right after the war, there wasn’t much work around, and I met her on Main Avenue one day,” he said.<\/p>\n
Joe was drafted into the army at 20 years old and served in WWII.<\/p>\n
As a sergeant combat engineer, Joe was responsible for building bridges across Europe, including the one over the Rhine River, which played a crucial role in the war. “The first troops landed in Africa in 1942. and we went all the way to Sicily, then we went to Corsica.”<\/p>\n
He helped move troops, supplies, and hope across the war’s toughest terrain, even crossing paths with his brother on the front lines. “He was a survivor of Pearl Harbor. I met him in Germany twice. We happened to come together, which is strange, but we come together,” Joe said.<\/p>\n
Joe never talks much about his time in service, but his family says those years defined him.<\/p>\n
“You got more out of him than we did,” said Joe Anticoli, Joe’s son.<\/p>\n
With more than a century of birthdays under his belt, Joe’s kids say they don’t take a single one for granted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joe says he’s not searching for any secrets to getting older; he’s just simply happy to be here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
105 years of service, sacrifice, and love is more than anyone could ask for.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The winter storm didn’t stop a World War II veteran from celebrating a very special birthday of 105…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-51501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51501","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=51501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}