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thedrifter
02-10-05, 07:53 PM
World War I vet, one of the nation's oldest Marines, dies at 106
2/10/2005, 6:02 p.m. CT
The Associated Press

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — George Dewey Perkins, one of the nation's oldest Marines, has died at the age of 106.

He would have been 107 next month.

Perkins died Wednesday of natural causes at Overton Brooks VA Medical Center, said his adopted granddaughter Rose Mary Mason-Robinson, a patient advocate at the hospital.

Perkins was active until a week ago and was admitted to the hospital Tuesday.

He took part in public events as recently as the Veterans Day rededication of Municipal Auditorium in November.

"If I could go, I'd go back in today," Perkins said in late May at ceremonies honoring deployed Marines. "I'd go right back in today, and I'd join the 1st Regiment."

Perkins was a month older than a man described last year by the Department of Defense as the nation's oldest known living Marine, Joseph DiPofi of Buffalo, N.Y.

Services will be Saturday at Rose-Neath Southside Chapel, followed by burial in Sentries Memorial Park with full military and Masonic honors.

Perkins served in the Marines from 1917 to 1919 and was about to head to Europe when he and other members of his unit came down with the Spanish flu, which was killing millions of people throughout the world. Perkins' sergeant, an American Indian, kept them away from the unit's doctors and treated them with a tribal medication, which Perkins said saved their lives.

Perkins was born in Iola, Kan., and moved to the Shreveport area during the 1920s oil boom. His stories included one about the time a heavy pipe cracked his skull in the oil field and he was given up for dead by all but one nurse, who revived him and became his wife. Miriam Jordan Perkins, to whom he was married 65 years, died Dec. 7, 1986.

Survivors include his son, J.R. Perkins, and two adopted granddaughters.

Ellie

Rest In Peace