{"id":70543,"date":"2017-02-26T09:02:06","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T14:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=70543"},"modified":"2017-02-26T09:02:06","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T14:02:06","slug":"bentley-kassal-wwii-vet-turns-100-on-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70543","title":{"rendered":"Bentley Kassal, WWII vet turns 100 on the job"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=70544\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-70544\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Bentley-Kassal-290x333.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"290\" height=\"333\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-70544\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Bentley-Kassal-290x333.jpg 290w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Bentley-Kassal-261x300.jpg 261w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Bentley-Kassal.jpg 381w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Mikhail emailed us to let us know about his workmate, Bentley Kassal, whose 100th birthday is Tuesday. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bentley_Kassal\">Wiki<\/a>, he is still working as an attorney and litigation counsel, he was admitted to the NY Bar Association in 1940, then Pearl Harbor happened. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courts.state.ny.us\/courts\/AD1\/centennial\/Bios\/bkassal2.shtml\">NYCourts.Gov<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> In January 1942, he enlisted in the Army and soon graduated from Officer Candidates School and Air Combat Intelligence School. Serving as an air-combat intelligence officer in North Africa and the Mediterranean, he earned a Bronze Star and three Bronze Arrowheads for his intelligence planning and first-day landings during major invasions. He was discharged as Captain on December 31, 1945, and is presently a Major, U.S. Air Force Reserves (Retired). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/today.law.harvard.edu\/shutter-speed-65-years\/\">Harvard&#8217;s Law Bulletin<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Kassal enlisted as a private in the Army in 1942. He graduated 17th in a class of 2,500 from Army Air [Corps] Officer School, and in 1943, he arrived in North Africa and was assigned to air intelligence support for the invasion of Italy. Kassal landed on the beach near Gela, Sicily, and dug his first foxhole as the bombs started to fall. \u201cIt felt like living in your own grave,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n<p>Kassal planned bombing runs and advised American pilots on the vulnerabilities of the German Luftwaffe. He participated in two other landings during major invasions, in Salerno, Italy, and finally on Aug. 18, at St. Tropez, on the coast of Southern France\u2014three days after the invasion of 250,000 Allied troops, which he had helped to plan. It was 70 days after the Allied forces stormed the Normandy beaches.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After the war, Kassal went on to serve in the New York Assembly and as a judge;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Kassal was later elected to the Civil Court in 1969. A major accomplishment of his while at the Civil Court was the establishment of Housing Court. <\/p>\n<p>In 1975, Justice Kassal was elected to the Supreme Court Bench and in 1982 was appointed to the Appellate Division, First Department by Governor Carey. While on that bench, he was appointed by Chief Judge Wachtler of the Court of Appeals to serve on an interim basis at that Court for its April\/May 1985 term. Justice Kassal reached the mandatory retirement age in 1993, at which time he retired from the Appellate Division bench. That\u2019s not to say he went into retirement. He started a new career in 1998, becoming Counsel at the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &#038; Flom, where he remains. He also serves on several professional committees in New York, including, among others, the court system\u2019s Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics and the Mayor\u2019s Committee on City Marshals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mikhail emailed us to let us know about his workmate, Bentley Kassal, whose 100th birthday is &hellip; <a title=\"Bentley Kassal, WWII vet turns 100 on the job\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70543\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bentley Kassal, WWII vet turns 100 on the job<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}