ELYRIA — The numbers grow fewer every year and soon there will be none.

Perhaps that’s what heightens the special nature of each Pearl Harbor remembrance observance across the land.

The scene at Elyria’s VFW Post 1079 this morning no doubt echoed those held by countless veterans’ organizations across the land to mark the 68th anniversary of the devastating sneak attack by Japan that shattered the tranquility and beauty of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, and plunged a heretofore isolationist America into World War II.

“We will gather here and continue to gather here to honor the very few who can still say ‘I was at Pearl Harbor,’ ” said Gene O’Quinn, commander of Elyria’s VFW Thomas Mihalis Memorial Post 1079.

The post’s Chaplain, John Polgar, told the 40-odd veterans and others in attendance that the horrific events of Pearl Harbor “shattered myths and illusions” and exposed the great level of America’s unpreparedness for war.

But the attack, which claimed the lives of more than 2,300 Americans, damaged or destroyed hundreds of American aircraft and crippled nearly half of the U.S. Pacific Naval fleet, also served to stir what would be the greatest wartime mechanization the world had ever seen.

One of those in attendance was 86-year-old Alex Gressler, an Amherst resident who was graduating from Lorain High School in 1941 as the U.S. entered the war but wound up serving as a machinist aboard a landing craft ship that brought American troops ashore for the horrific and costly Battle of Okinawa that took the lives of more than 120,000 Americans and Japanese less than two months before the war ended.

“I was never under direct fire. It was the kamikaze pilots you had to be scared of. They were crazy. You never knew when they were going to try and dive down on ships.”

Read Tuesday’s Chronicle for more on this story.

Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.

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