Three military heroes and brothers in their late 90s will be honored during Iowa-Nevada game on Saturday
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – No matter what happens on the field Saturday night at Kinnick Stadium, those in attendance will be in the presence of greatness, the kind of greatness in which ordinary people become the ultimate heroes.
Three brothers will be honored in the second quarter of the Iowa-Nevada football game as part of the Military Hero program.
To qualify for the Military Hero Program, the nominee, or three nominees in this case, must have a military background and a tie to Iowa to be selected.
The Lehman brothers, Fred, Walt and Bob, all meet those requirements, but there is so much more to their amazing story, a journey that has lasted nearly a century for all three brothers.
It almost seems too amazing to be true, three brothers ages 99, 98 and 96 all having fought and survived the death, destruction and brutality during World War II, and to still be alive more than 70 years after the war ended.
Walt Lehman was preparing to invade Japan as part of an amphibious assault team when the Japanese Army finally surrendered in September 1945 shortly after the United States had dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving both cities in ruin.
“We were all ready to go,” 98-year-old Walt Lehman said Thursday in a telephone interview from his home in West Liberty. “We had amphibious training and everything else. There would have been a lot of us that wouldn’t have survived if we would’ve had to land on Japan.
“That would have been a disaster, I think. But it would’ve happened, I’m sure.”
Walt spent a year in Japan after the war as part of an occupation force before returning home.
He was wounded in battle in the Phillipines and spent 56 days in the hospital recovering from injuries suffered from a grenade attack.
The Japanese solider that tossed the grenade was killed during the exchange that sent Walt to the hospital.
Walt’s fellow soldiers paid tribute to his bravery by giving him the rifle, sword and bayonet that belonged to the Japanese soldier that had injured him.
Walt still has all three weapons in his home in West Liberty.
“When I got wounded, the company the next day, they brought that back to the company and they held it for me,” Walt said. “And when I returned to the company, I sent it home, and I’ve had it ever since.”
Walt Lehman was awarded the Purple Heart for his service to his country, and for his bravery.
Fred Lehman at 99 is the oldest of the three Lehman brothers that will be honored on Saturday, while Bob Lehman is the youngest at 96.
Fred Lehman served two years during World War II and was part of the 82nd Replacement Division when the war ended.
Bob Lehman served 2 ½ years during World War II as a marine and fought in battles in the Pacific theater.
All three brothers put their lives on the line every day, and while nearly a half million United States military personnel were killed in World War II, all three Lehman brothers made it out alive, and without any life-altering injuries.
“Oh my, it’s just amazing we were a part of it,” Walt Lehman said. “We lived through it, didn’t lose an arm or a leg, or an eye, or something. It’s just amazing.”
Walt uses the word amazing a lot when talking about his life, and the lives of his two brothers.
Walt and Bob live in West Liberty where the brothers grew up, while Fred lives in Mount Vernon.
All three brothers worked in the agriculture business after returning from the war, and they have remained very close.
“It’s just amazing that we’re still alive and do what we do,” Walt Lehman said.
The Lehman brothers were nominated for the Military Hero Award by their second cousin, Durk Sterner, who calls them the legendary Lehman brothers.
Sterner had been trying to get his cousins nominated since 2019, but then the Covid-19 global pandemic put that plan on hold.
All three Lehman brothers made it through the global pandemic without getting sick, so Sterner figured the 2022 season would be the right time to put his plan into action.
“And I thought, man, how many more times can I keep this going,” Sterner said. “I’m running out of time, and maybe they are, too, as well.”
“So, this summer I started e-mailing people.”
One e-mail led to another, but it took a while for Sterner to hear back from from Learfield: Hawkeye Sports Properties, which runs the Military Hero Program.
Sterner was told about a week before the start of the 2022 season that his three cousins would be honored during one of the seven home games.
“I said perfect, but the earlier the better,” Sterner said. “They’re old.”
Saturday’s game between Iowa and Nevada is the final nonconference game of the season and will start at 6 p.m. at Kinnick Stadium.
Sterner said the plan is to have his Fred, Walt and Bob at the stadium by 5 p.m. to start the festivities.
Walt looks forward to sharing this milestone moment with his two brothers.
“It’s just amazing that we’re still able to do something like this at our age,” Walt said. “It’s amazing we can even talk and do something like this. It’s just amazing.”
Walt and his brothers still spend a lot of time together, and their conversations often turn to their days in the military.
They already shared a tight bond as brothers, but to have fought and survived World War II has brought them even closer because each brother knows first-hand what they’ve been through.
“We talk about it when we’re together quite a bit, things that happened and what we went through and things like that,” Walt said.
They also talk about their good fortune and how lucky they are to have survied a war that killed millions.
“You can’t put your thumb on that,” Walt said of why he and his two brothers were able to survive the war. “You’ve just got to count your blessings. Somebody was looking over our shoulders, I guess.”
There will be thousands of Hawkeye fans looking on and cheering for the three brothers on Saturday.
“They will love it, love it, love it, but yet, they’ll express it in a way that they really enjoyed themselves, but in a way, they’ll say, why are the fussing over us,” Sterner said. “Typical of their generation.”
Walt doesn’t really look at himself as a hero.
He and his two brothers just did what they had to do to help their country during a dark time.
“Everybody had to do what they had to it seemed like,” Walt said. “That’s just the way it was.”
Walt learned a lot about himself during his days fighting in the Phillipines. He learned to survive, and he learned to cherish life even more from seeing so young and promising many lives ended by the violence of war.
“You learn as you go, that’s for sure,” Walt said.
Asked what the secret is to all three brothers living a long life, Walt Lehman said:
“I don’t know. We never did drink or smoke much, or anything like that, I guess. But I don’t know.”
Emotions will run high when Walt and his two brothers walk on to the field Saturday to a rousing ovation.
“I think it’s going to be pretty overwhelming,” Walt said. “I just can’t picture it, really.”