D-Day vet remembers that day, many more, at age 97
Story by Roxann Edsall Photos by Richard Rybka
Robert L. Curl was just a boy, like so many others, when he enlisted in the Navy. It was the summer of 1943, just a day after graduating from Minor High School in Adamsville. He had to take his dad with him to sign his enlistment papers because he was only 17. “My dad told me he wished he could go with me,” remembers Curl. “He was the best man I’ve ever known.”
The next three and a half years would take him all over the world as a member of the special amphibious unit, “Scouts and Raiders.” A precursor to the modern-day SEAL teams, these special forces were expected to identify landing beaches for troops during World War II and to lead forces to those landing zones.
Veteran Robert Curl shows a V-mail he sent to his sweetheart during World War II.
Curl was a radarman aboard a Landing Cruise Control (LLC) headed to Normandy leading up to D-Day. It was his job on LCC-10 to find Omaha Beach and lead the first two waves of soldiers ashore. “That morning I was scared to death,” he recalls, “But I told myself I’m going to do my best. They had me wear an impregnable suit with a special armband that would change color to let us know if the Germans were using poison gas.”
They had already practiced the invasion during a top-secret mission called Operation Tiger, performed less than two months before. To prepare the Allied Forces as much as possible, this full-scale rehearsal for D-Day took place on the south coast of England. “It’s a good thing we did it,” said Curl. “There was a problem with what they called the Mae West lifejacket. During Operation Tiger, these were new, and the soldiers didn’t wear them right. So many people died in the waters because of that. They learned from it and taught people how to use them right.”
At 97 years old, Curl is sharp as a tack and recalls stories with vivid detail. Despite the wartime and personal tragedy he has experienced, he is one of the most positive and genuinely happy people you could ever meet.
He spent more than 70 years with the love of his life, whom he met just before the war. When he talks about his Nell (Spring) Curl, his face beams.
He met her the first Sunday after his Methodist minister father moved them to a new town. “When we got to church that day, I saw the most beautiful girl in the world doing the devotion,” Curl tells. “I leaned over to the guy next to me and told him I was going to marry that girl.”
He had to wait until the end of the war, but in 1946, he married his sweetheart. He shows me a piece of Victory Mail (V-Mail) that he sent to her during Operation Tiger dated “April 1944 – from somewhere in England.” Though she passed away in 2015, he still talks to her every evening before bed.
Curl still drives and often goes on road trips with his two sons, Rick and David. He tells of his first car, long since traded. “Ever heard of a Crosley,” he asks. “I had a ’46 Crosley and it had a whopping 46-horsepower engine the size of a carton of cigarettes,” he adds, laughing.
Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home a model for the country to follow
Story by Roxann Edsall Photos by Richard Rybka
As the country honors its veterans this Veterans Day, Pell City is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its innovative Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home. This year’s celebration includes a party with special guests, along with a road trip to participate in the 75th Birmingham Veterans Day Parade.
Twelve years ago, construction began on a state-of-the-art facility for veterans on 26 acres of land in Pell City donated by the St. Clair County Economic Development Council. After two years of construction, the $50-million home opened its doors. Named for Col. Robert L. Howard, a highly decorated United States Army Special Forces officer from Opelika, it was one of a handful like it across the nation.
What’s different about Pell City’s veterans home is both the design and management. It was built using the “Green House Model,” a design concept that features residential houses built in small neighborhood-style configurations. This contrasts the more typical multi-bed, multi-hall, single-building style of nursing home.
In the case of the Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home, the 240,000-square-foot facility has three neighborhoods, each with three 14-bedroom houses. The houses also have their owncommon spaces, including living rooms, dining rooms, staffed kitchens and porches. A single roof connects all three neighborhoods, so residents and staff do not have to go out in the weather to get from one place to another.
Gone, too, are the bustling nurses’ stations. Instead, smaller “home offices” contain the computers and information nursing staff need to assist the residents of a particular house. Specialized nursing equipment is tucked neatly away in storage rooms.
Kenneth, Hillary and Robert
The structures are designed to feel like single-family homes, with services in the neighborhood like you might find in a typical town. Residents can go to the main building, called the “Town Center,” for services including dining options; physical, occupational or speech therapy; and even a haircut. Residents can use the onsite medical director as their family doctor, while still going off property to see specialists.
An unexpected benefit of the smaller-home style of skilled nursing care became evident at the onset of the pandemic. “Having private rooms and smaller units definitely helped keep COVID from spreading,” said director Hiliary Hardwick.
The Green House Model advantage is not just about facilities, though. The staff offer residents choices in most aspects of the daily schedule. Whether the choice is what time to get up, what to eat, or when to eat, the choices at Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home honor the veteran’s dignity and quality of life.
Over the past decade, delegations from several different states have come to town to see how this model facility works. Most recently, the veterans home hosted groups from Mississippi, Idaho and Oklahoma looking to experience the real-life application of the Green House Model prior to planning for their own veterans homes.
The Pell City veteran residents are happy to have been among the first in the country to take advantage of the new style of home.“I want to thank the people of Pell City and all of Alabama for building this place,” says WWII veteran Robert Curl. Showing the day’s menu choices, he adds, “Look at what we get to eat! I tell everyone I live in a country club. It’s a really great place.”
Talladega native and veteran Kenneth Scoggins agrees. He moved in just four months after it opened and has served as president of the residents’ council for the last seven years. “It’s great, very clean and none of those smells you smell at other places,” he says. “I told someone (when I moved in) that I must have died and gone to nursing home heaven. We do things all the time, even go to ball games and out to eat.”
“We do have a lot to do around here,” agrees Hardwick. “There are always activities offered. We have Bible studies, pet therapy visits, musical guests, and special speakers. James Spann, author and weatherman from ABC 33/40, was recently here with us.”
The facility does have a waiting list of nine months to a year, but Hardwick encourages anyone who qualifies to fill out an application. Qualifications include having served a minimum of 90 days of active duty, with at least one of those days having been during a period of war; having been honorably discharged and having been evaluated for medical needs.
Hardwick was a nurse at Trinity Hospital before leaving to help open the Pell City veterans facility. It’s a move she is very happy to have made. Her enthusiasm for her work is evident when she talks about the residents she spends time with each day. “I love being here where I get to interact with and help people who lived and breathed the history I’ve only read about in history books,” she says.
The 254 residents look forward to all holidays, Hardwick says, but none as much as they do Christmas. “At Christmas time, it looks like you’ve gone to Gatlinburg, we have so many trees decorated,” she explains. “We have an angel tree that we do for the veterans. People can take an angel off the tree and buy a couple of things a veteran wanted. Then at their Christmas party, they have gifts to open.”
Hardwick encourages anyone to get in touch with her if you would like to participate in the angel tree, help with the home’s benevolence fund or even donate bingo prizes. They also have in-person volunteer opportunities for those who might like to spend some time visiting a veteran.
Editor’s Note:To apply to the Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home, contact them at www.va.alabama.gov. For volunteer opportunities, contact Hiliary Hardwick at 205-338-6487.
Helping area veterans and honoring a military son’s memory
Story Paul South Photos by Graham Hadley Submitted photos
Even as a kid, Houston Lee Tumlin “lit up a room” when he entered. The moviegoing public saw his light in the movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, where Tumlin played Walker Bobby, the oldest son of Ricky, played by Will Ferrell.
He played the part to the hilt, his mom, Michelle, remembered. But when the cameras stopped rolling, the then-13-year-old went back to his St. Clair County raising.
“They would be filming, and he would just be cussing people out. But when they would go to break, he would say, ‘May I have a bag of chips?’”
The astonished cast and crew wondered where the on-camera kid with potty mouth had gone. “They were all wondering where those manners came from,” Michelle says.
Houston Tumlin
in uniform
But that was Houston, a class clown and sometimes “hot mess” who loved to make people laugh, who would defend bullied classmates, and competed in sports at Victory Christian Academy, especially football.
Competition began for him as a toddler — baseball, soccer, wrestling, even dabbling in mixed martial arts.
After high school, he joined the Army, earning medals and commendations and numerous training certifications, serving stateside and in South Korea in the storied 101st Airborne, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.
Among his honors: the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal and the Non-Commissioned Officer Professional Development Medal and many others.
“He was a badass,” his mom says with a laugh.
But in his last military posting, life took a tragic turn for Houston Tumlin.
“The year in Korea was not good for him,” Michelle Tumlin says. “There was a lot of bad stuff that happened. “
But on March 23, 2021, the light turned to the deepest darkness. Suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and what researchers at Boston University later determined was CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), Houston took his own life. For Michelle Tumlin, “It was the worst day of my life. The thing that I hold onto is that the doctors said to me that the CTE took away his impulse control. He had an on-off switch, and his flipped that day.
“You add the brain damage and some personal stuff and then you add the bad stuff that happened in Korea, and it was literally the reason he got out of the military.”
Daily, 22 past or present American service personnel commit suicide, their brains shaken by the blasts of battlefields, souls shredded by nightmarish memories, or concussions caused in competition. In Tumlin’s case, between sports and military service and two car accidents, he suffered an estimated 22 concussions between the ages of 14 and 28, Michelle Tumlin says. Those injuries triggered personality changes, alcoholism and changed Houston. His light was gradually fading to black. Depression, alcoholism, multiple head trauma: the recipe for CTE.
“He suffered the last four years of his life,” she says. “It was confirmed after a brain study at Boston University that he had CTE.” Among other contributing factors, “That’s the reason he committed suicide.”
CTE triggered his symptoms – headaches, happy one minute, sad the next, anger from out of nowhere and a descent into becoming what his mom called, “a straight-up alcoholic.”
“When he was drinking beer with a group of friends, he was fine. When he drank liquor, he would turn into the saddest, most depressed person who never thought he was good. He became a completely different person. That had a huge impact on him doing what he did. It was his kryptonite.”
The Tumlins are one of a growing number of military and NFL families that have donated their loved one’s brain for research at BU. CTE can only be determined after death.
While the Tumlin family’s grief will never die, a year to the day after Houston’s death, Michelle opened the nonprofit Houston Project. Proceeds from the sale of patriotic hats, T-shirts, popcorn, candles and “a little bit of everything” at the store go to help vets and their families. Every cent goes to veterans and their families.
In the Cogswell Avenue storefront, Michelle Tumlin fights a quiet battle. Armed with smiles and encouragement, she wants to give veterans hope.
“I started Houston Project because I needed something in my life that felt good, but to also raise awareness for mental problems, PTSD, alcoholism, CTE – all of the above – mental health, period. Raising awareness was important to me.”
She adds, “I wanted to do both of those things and honor my son.”
While the focus of the project is on veterans, the Houston Project is working with other area organizations to help in the fight against mental illness.
“Mental health is important, whether you are a veteran or not,” Tumlin says. “My platform is to be my son’s voice here on this earth. I’m here to tell his story and to try to keep others from doing what Houston did and help give them awareness before it gets to that. That’s why I exist.”
In other times in other wars, PTSD went by other names: shell shock, soldier’s complaint, combat fatigue or war neurosis. The historical record dates such illness as early as 2,600 years ago. And while researchers and medical professionals know more about PTSD, Tumlin believes veterans aren’t receiving adequate help.
“When (service personnel) get out of the military, they need a way to get back to who they were before they joined the military,” Tumlin says. “The military teaches them to be strong and to be tough and to be soldiers. It was hard for Houston to feel normal again. Not being in the military, he just didn’t feel right, if that makes sense.He couldn’t find his way.”
Houston missed the camaraderie of the military.
“He struggled with depression, nonstop. He was a happy person and a funny person. But he couldn’t find his right place.”
While Army Specialist E-4 Houston Lee Tumlin is gone, he is far from forgotten. While at the time of his death, sordid celebrity news outlets centered on the “Child Actor Commits Suicide” angle, so many others – in Pell City, in the Army and elsewhere – remembered him as so much more – son, brother, fiancé, a soldier who served his country with honor.
The family takes a stroll on the beach.
Houston Tumlin packed a lot of living into 28 years.
“He walked into a room and took it over. He had the most beautiful smile. He could make people laugh. I mean, the people that started reaching out to us after he passed – from all of these soldiers from all over the map – messaging us, calling us, telling us it was his goal to make people happy,” Michelle says.
There is another story that the Tumlins heard about their son, from a girl recounting the story of a date she had with Houston in the cold of winter.
“She said they were driving in downtown Birmingham,” Michelle recalls. “Houston stopped the car and told her he’d be right back. He got a coat from the back of the car, locked the car, and took the coat to a homeless man across the street. Hearing these stories just filled my heart. I could not be a prouder Mom.”
The Houston Project, created by a grieving family to help veterans and to honor their fallen son, not only helps vets with things like household repairs and moving expenses. It recently helped a veteran’s family in a poignant, particular way, a fitting tribute to the kid who lit up a room.
It paid the family’s utility bill and kept the lights glowing.
Editor’s Note:The nonprofit Houston Project is open Thursdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. The store is located at 1916 Cogswell Ave. in Pell City. Find the store on Facebook. Every cent of sales goes to help local veterans and their families.
Story by Elaine Hobson Miller Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Wayne Johnson has thought a lot about his legacy and what he will leave behind when he has departed this earthly life. He wants it to be his work with veterans. Considering what he does for and with them every week, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Although he recently retired after five-and-a-half years as veterans outreach coordinator for the St. Clair County Extension office, Johnson still takes veterans to medical appointments, helps them access their government benefits and makes regular visits to the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City. “I never considered it work because I enjoyed it so much,” he says of his time with the extension office.
Johnson was one of the first people Frank Veal met after moving into the veterans home, and the pair have been friends ever since. A Korean War vet who served in the Air Force for 26 years, Veal is a native of Troy. He owns a van with a ramp that he lets Johnson use to ferry other vets to various appointments. The veterans home takes care of its residents’ medical trips.
“Wayne was here to help Frank celebrate his 91st birthday in August,” says Reshina Pratt, administrative support assistant at the veterans home. “They are very close.”
Johnson also is close to Veal’s next-door-neighbor, Tom Kelly, who is originally from Maryland but raised his family in Alabama. Another Korean War veteran, Kelly has been at the home since 2014. “Wayne visits us weekly, more if we have a need,” says Kelly. “Sometimes he brings us lunch, like barbecued ribs, and he has made trips to Montgomery with us.”
“He’s a good guy, and we appreciate him,” says Veal. “He’s a handy man to have around.”
It’s Personal
One of the reasons Johnson has such an affinity for veterans is that he’s a veteran himself. He grew up in Portsmouth, Va., and joined the Air Force right out of high school. He retired after serving for 20 years, then worked for a government contractor 14 years. Later, he was employed as activities director at the veterans home. He retired from his job with the Extension Service in April to help take care of his one-year-old grandson, Jaxson, and as of late August, ACES still had not found a replacement.
From the beginning, Johnson’s vision was to get out into the community to find veterans and widows of veterans who needed assistance, according to Lee Ann Clark, the St. Clair County Extension Service coordinator. “He worked hard and successfully accomplished his goal of making veterans aware of the benefits that are available to them and helped many obtain these benefits,” Clark says. “Not only did he reach the elderly and middle-aged veterans, but he also assisted younger ones.”
Although his retirement plans originally included relaxation, fishing and spending time with his grandson, he continues to be an asset to the veterans in the community in some capacity.
Wayne Johnson
Johnson estimates that he probably takes vets to appointments and helps them run other errands three times a week. “Some live in their own homes but can’t get out and get their groceries by themselves,” Johnson says. That’s where Veal’s van comes in handy. “I let him keep it at his house,” Veal says.
Johnson met his wife, Cheryl, when both were in the military and stationed in Kansas. She spent 10 years in the Air Force in accounting. When he retired, they decided to come back to Pell City because it was her hometown. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One daughter, Jaxson’s mother, lives in Pell City. The other daughter, who has two children, lives in the Netherlands, where Johnson was once stationed while in the Air Force.
“Wayne does an awesome job with local veterans,” says Cheryl Johnson, who has been married to Wayne for 30 years. “We need more people like him because there’s a huge need with veterans in this county. So many are here alone, with their children in different states. He works well with people, and he’s still helping with some he was attached to. He picks up people as needed for appointments for a few who still reach out to him, and Lee Ann still refers people to him from time to time. He tries to direct them to the right resources if he can’t help them.”
His motivation, she says, is that he just loves reaching out to veterans. “When the St. Clair Extension Office had that opening, they wanted a veteran, and he was in a position to take the job,” she says. “It was part time, and he took it to have something to do. Then it got bigger and bigger because there was so much need out there. A news article would post, and the calls would continue to come in.” Cheryl says her husband connects with people. “He loves war movies and the history of wars, and loves the stories the veterans tell him,” she says.
Prior to its recent COVID-19 lockdown, the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home saw Johnson drop by at least once a week to participate in activities with residents. “He’s a great resource for us,” says Reshina Pratt. “One day a homeless vet from out of town stopped by and we called Wayne, and he helped him get the assistance he needed. He’s a kind, caring, helpful man. Even though he has retired (from the county extension office), we still call on him for assistance. I know he’ll be back here after the restrictions are lifted.”
The Rev. Willie E. Crook met Johnson about 20 years ago when Crook was a contractor building community churches. Johnson helped get Rocky Zion Baptist Church in Pell City built, according to Crook.
“When I worked with him then, he had another job but came by and checked on the construction twice a day, before and after work,” says Crook.
“He’s a dedicated man. The Lord led me to build a ranch for underprivileged, inner-city kids. I talked to Wayne about helping me, and we started Gateway to Life Youth Ranch in Ohatchee 12 years ago. He’s president of the ranch, which hosts at-risk kids on weekends so they can enjoy the outdoors, fishing, woodworking and the animals at the ranch. We also mentor fourth- and fifth-grade boys’ classes at Saks Middle School in Anniston.”
Crook vouches for the fact that Johnson has befriended many veterans through the years. “Many times, he has come to the ranch to pick up or drop something, and he has had a vet with him,” Crook says. “He cares about them and would do anything in the world for them. He’s a giving man. We didn’t have any funds when we started that ranch, and he has gone into his pocket several times.”
A modest man, when asked why he continues to work with veterans, Johnson has a quick and simple reply: “It gives me a sense of satisfaction.”
Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home still a standout almost a decade later
Story by Carol Pappas Staff photos
When the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home opened in 2012, officials knew it would usher in a new era for the region. The state and nation, really.
After all, this cutting-edge concept in state veterans homes was the pioneer, leading others to fall in line and follow suit.
It wasn’t just the breathtaking design – more like an exclusive mountain lodge and resort town than a nursing, assisted living and memory care facility. It was the realization that finally, veterans had a home worthy of their service to the country.
In the years that have followed, others saw it as a model, an idea that has grown and thrived around the country. Here at home in Alabama, the state is getting ready to open its fifth state veterans home in Enterprise. And it’s no surprise that the model in Pell City became the inspiration.
“If you ask veterans where they would rather be, their answer would be, ‘I’d rather be at home,’” said Rear Adm. Clyde Marsh, commissioner of the Alabama Veterans Administration just before it opened. “We tried to create a home they would like to go to and enjoy. We think the veterans will be happy here.”
He was right. Inside its massive corridors is like strolling through a downtown main street. Glass storefronts reveal what’s housed inside – a beauty shop, barber shop, pharmacy, library, chapel and a café.
The town center is an immense room anchored by a floor-to-cathedral-ceiling fireplace, sitting areas and nooks, a gathering place for residents and visitors alike. Courtyards and covered patios with rocking chairs add to the welcoming atmosphere.
Residences aren’t hospital-style rooms, they are neighborhoods with private rooms, a central kitchen, dining room and living room – just like the admiral said nine years ago, a home.
The home boasts several places to eat and relax.
The $50-million project did not miss its target, providing homes for 891 veterans to date, giving them access from assisted living to Alzheimer’s/dementia and skilled nursing services.
Hiliary Hardwick, director of the veterans home, has served there since the opening. She has played a role in every one of those 891 admissions, she said.
In return, the rewards have been many over the years, she said. “I get to know them and their families and take care of them. I get to know their stories.”
She knows the personal remembrances of D-Day, women who served in World War II, the liberation of Paris, landing on Omaha Beach or the fighting in Korea and Vietnam. They are eyewitnesses to history.
As World War II veterans have aged and passed away over the past nine years, the veterans home staff are seeing rapid changes. “We are having more and more Vietnam veterans,” Hardwick said. Veterans of the Gulf War are beginning to come there to live as well.
“They’re a lot younger – in their 60s and 70s – instead of late 80s and 90s,” and the staff are adapting to their needs. “It’s a different mindset on how to take care of them,” she explained. “They’re more tech savvy. They know about Wi-Fi,” and the changing needs are being met.
They’re more active, she noted, and consequently, activities for them are changing. As an example, she said there are a lot of golfers, so they partnered with the Alabama Golf Superintendent’s Association to design and build a putting green on the grounds. The community joined the effort as well with donations from Disabled American Veterans, American Legion and Pell City Rotary Club.
Community involvement like the putting green project is not unusual at the veterans home over the years, although activity has been significantly limited in the past year due to pandemic concerns.
But in years past, the community has ‘adopted’ the veterans home and its residents, making sure needs are fulfilled – from special events to visits to decorating for Christmas to entertaining or just being a friend.
Just like Rear Adm. Marsh said, it’s their home, and it should befit their service.
Hardwick agreed, talking about the sacrifices they made and the history they’ve experienced and are willing to share. “They’ve lived history, it’s not just something you read in a book.”
At 95, World War II vet Bob Curl recalls horror of war, an unconditional love and a wonderful life
Story by Paul South Submitted Photos
Barely a year out of high school, Bob Curl saw things a kid his age ought never see: the shattered bodies of young men, their lives snatched in a twinkling.
He’s also known the joy that every human heart should know, the magic of an unconditional, long-lasting love that endures to this day, though its beloved is years gone.
Like a Frank Capra movie of the 1940s, Curl – now 95 – has known horror and heartbreak, love, laughter and selfless service, the stuff poured into a life well lived.
A resident of the Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home in St. Clair County, Curl still drives, running the roads, snapping photos of his trips with cameras from his large collection of vintage photography gear. He’s been interviewed by historians from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
His smiles and his stories are well known at the place he calls home – a wonderful place, he says, where he’s been known to join a side in a rollicking game of volleyball. “I tell people I live at a country club,” he says.
Chat with him long enough, and Curl will tell you stories of bloodied French beaches, a department store fire, the Sabbath morning he first saw the love of his life and the time he met the legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
What a life.
First, let’s tackle the hard part of Bob Curl’s days.
Hill over Omaha Beach
In June 1944, his job as a Navy radarman was simple – to use the high technology of the day to find Omaha Beach. He did. In a briefing in Britain days before the invasion, the teenage sailor learned that he would be part of the first flotilla of Allied vessels, facing batteries of German 88s, heavy artillery protected by reinforced concrete pillboxes.
“We were told we were probably going to be killed,” Curl said. So, I wrote a letter to my mother. I told her I wish I’d been a better son. She didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. But I thought that was the end of me.”
A strike on one of those pillboxes, Curl believes, saved his life.
On June 9, three days after D- Day, the initial Allied thrust onto the European continent, aimed at ending Nazi occupation, Curl slogged ashore through bloodied water and shrapnel-peppered sand. What he saw is seared in memory, more than 75 years later.
“… Bodies and parts of bodies all over the place,” Curl remembered. “(Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman) Ernie Pyle came on our boat. He went on the beach the second day (June 7) and when he came back, he wrote what he saw. They censored it and wouldn’t let it go through. At that time, the only way you could make a copy was carbon paper and onion skin paper. And he submitted his story, and they thought it was too graphic and too bad. So, they censored it.”
Pyle, who was killed in the Pacific while embedded with an American unit, on D-Day wrote of bloody boots and the mundane and the strange that fighting men carried into the carnage – cigarettes and writing paper, a banjo and a tennis racket.
Pyle saw what he thought were two sticks jutting out of the sand. He was mistaken.
“They were a soldier’s two feet,” Pyle wrote. “He was completely covered by the shifting sands except for his feet. The toes of his G.I. shoes pointed toward the land he had come far to see and which we saw so briefly.”
As Pyle finished the dispatch that War Department censors quashed, Curl asked him for the trash-can-bound carbon of the story and Pyle gave it to him. It’s long lost, but after the war, as a college student struggling with an English class, Curl copied Pyle’s story word for word, hoping for a needed good grade.
“I thought, ‘Oh boy, I got him now,’” Curl said of his tough taskmaster professor.
Pyle’s work earned Curl a C+.
After victory in Europe, Curl was preparing for the invasion of Japan on Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands when he learned of victory in Japan.
A love story
He would have a personal victory once he returned home. He married his wife, the former Nell Spring. The Methodist minister’s son met his future wife at a church youth social on Valentine’s Day in 1943. They dated for three months. He enlisted in the Navy the Saturday after graduation in May.
Bob and Nell Curl
He fell in love with her earlier that day, as he walked into church with a friend on his first Sunday in a new town.
“When I walked into church that morning, the most beautiful girl I ever saw was giving the devotion up there,” Curl recalled. “I nudged that boy next to me – I was 16 or 17 – I said, ‘I don’t know who that girl is, but I’m going to marry her.’”
It was the beginning of what would be a 69-year marriage, an old-fashioned love affair. She’s gone now, but every night, he talks with her, looking into the eyes of her picture adorning a wall in his room.
“She was the most wonderful lady I’ve ever known.”
Early years
Theirs is a magical story, one of several he tells. He got his first job in a local movie theater. Armed with a broomstick with a nail poking sharply from its end, Curl picked up trash.
His salary in the teeth of the Great Depression? “I got to see all the movies for free,” he said. The cost: One thin dime.
Another story was like something from a movie. As a nine-year-old while shopping with his mother at Birmingham’s iconic Loveman’s department store, a fire broke out, filling the store with smoke.
“We couldn’t go down the elevator,” Curl said. “I had my mother by the hand. We made it down to the first floor. The smoke was so thick, we couldn’t see. But we heard a voice telling us, ‘Come this way,’ That voice led us all the way out of the store. We got out through a broken show window.”
Visiting the World War II memorial
Ironically, Curl spent his professional life after the war as a Birmingham firefighter, who would go on to help train new recruits in the fire service. Like so many of his generation, Curl gave back to his community, while at the same time raising his family.
Now in retirement, he’s still impacting lives. A small bottle of shrapnel-laced sand from Omaha Beach – given by Curl to the veterans’ home – is part of a display honoring those who served. But more than the artifacts of war, Curl radiates happiness.
Said Hiliary Hardwick, director of the Veterans Home, “He definitely doesn’t act 95. He just has the most positive outlook on everything. I’ve never heard him or seen him when he’s upset. He just kind of takes life as it comes, and he just makes the most of it.”
She added, “He’s probably one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. He generally thinks of others before himself. He’s unique. You know, they call the World War II guys ‘The Greatest Generation.’ He’s truly the epitome of that. He’s selfless in everything that he does.”
Curl, she says, “just radiates happiness.”
Curl credits his heart for others to his dad, the late Rev. John Wesley Curl, whom he calls, “the best man I ever knew.”
Asked how he would sum up his own wonderful life, Curl responds with the two words he hopes will be his epitaph:
