When the Glen Park News last met up with Bob Seiwald at age 98, he had big plans: Travel to Europe to retrace his steps as a soldier in World War 2 and make his semi-annual trip to his second home in Mexico.
On the day of his 100th birthday, March 26, friends and immediate family gathered for a celebration, and a day later there was another blowout with extended family.
Photo: Gwen Dornan.
Seiwald’s son Christopher organized the trip to Europe, which was a complicated patchwork of the places Seiwald was stationed and traveled during World War 2. All in all there were six family members on the journey.
They traveled in style from Luxembourg to the Czech border, visiting towns along the Rhine and Mosel Rivers, mostly walking from one to another, with names like St. Goar, St. Goarshausen, Katzberg, Moosburg, Chemnitz, Traben-Trarbach and Ohrdruf.
They visited a huge cemetery with the men who fought the Battle of the Bulge—French, British, American and German—where Seiwald found the grave of one of the men from his platoon.
Many of the towns had museums with visitor’s books, but visitors had dwindled over the years, the soldiers who visited either had died or were too infirm to travel.
They stayed in castles that were converted to five-star hotels throughout the two-week trip. Christopher called ahead to the mayors of the small towns and when they arrived, they got the full VIP treatment.
“It was 50 years ago, so half of the places I remember and half I don’t. I looked around and said, ah, we must have been here. Germany has changed.”
Back at home Seiwald is busy. He added a panel to the Burnside mural which is right next door to his house; fine-tuned his rock garden in front of his house and completed various unfinished projects –the “last five percent” that never seems to get done.
And in a nod to posterity he’s working on completing his memoirs. “I’m up to age 35.”
“I handwrite them and read them into a microphone. Christopher records them and takes them home to Alameda where he has software which will transcribe them. Bit by bit after a couple, three revisions it commences to be readable.”
He’s also in the process of digitizing 50 years of old photos with Christopher’s technical help.
Seiwald admits to being lonely at times since his wife Joan died in May 2023. Joan was seven years younger and Seiwald expected Joan to take care of him in his old age. He’s alone in his house with no one to talk to, and cooking for himself is hard to do.
He looks forward to hosting weekly potlucks with his neighborhood lady friends.
What does the number 100 trigger in Seiwald’s mind? “I never expected to live that long. Because all the men in my family died young. They all worked themselves to death. My father worked as a farmer and as a gold miner. No men in the family ever lived very long.”
Seiwald says if he looked in the mirror he wouldn’t recognize himself. “If I met myself on the street I wouldn’t know me.”
Except for dimming eyesight and a pacemaker his health is remarkable. He can walk three miles and climb stairs. “I still enjoy life. And I figure, well, I will go along for a while longer.”