Early that December morning in Honolulu, long ago, George Flecky Jr. woke up to the sound of explosions coming from Naval Station Pearl Harbor, 8 miles away.
George Flecky. “He was a sweet man – smart, fun, optimistic and very humble,” said his daughter, Rosemary Brownrigg of Omaha.
The 20-year-old from Council Bluffs first thought that some of the large warships at the base – where he had worked as a civilian carpenter for seven months – were practicing gunnery.
Pearl Harbor was under attack by Japanese Navy bombers. Much of Battleship Row, where ships like the USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia were at anchor, was in flames.
Soon after, a truck arrived to take Flecky and other civilian workers to the naval base to fight the fires.
Arriving there, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“There was black smoke and oil everywhere,” Flecky told an interviewer for the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging’s New Horizons newspaper in 2020. “Some of those ships were still exploding.”
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Flecky will not forget Sunday, December 7, 1941 for the rest of his life, which turned out to be a long one. He died on February 16 at the New Cassel Retirement Center in Omaha, at the age of 100. He is believed to have been the last living witness to the attack on Pearl Harbor in the Omaha area.
“He was a sweet man – smart, fun, optimistic and very humble,” said his daughter, Rosemary Brownrigg of Omaha.
Flecky was born in Council Bluffs on October 22, 1921, the eldest of five children to Rose and George Flecky Sr. He worked in construction locally after graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School, helping to support his family during the Great Depression.
His carpentry skills brought him to Hawaii in the spring of 1941. Flecky signed a one-year contract to help build officers’ quarters at the naval base.
Like many young men at Pearl Harbor – sailors and civilians – he spent the night before the attack enjoying Honolulu’s bustling nightlife. He had planned to sleep the next morning.
The Pearl Harbor explosions disrupted this plan. The radio soon reported that the base was under attack.
“We were told that all American workers were to go to Pearl Harbor immediately to help put out the fires in the drydock,” Flecky told New Horizons in 2020.
What he saw upon arriving at the base shocked him. Smoke and flames blanketed the waterfront. The battleships Arizona, Oklahoma and West Virginia had all sunk at their moorings, and other ships were crippled or on fire. Planes at Hickam Field, adjacent to Pearl Harbor, formed burning pyres on the airfield.
And the base was still under attack.
“I remember seeing those Marines at the gate firing their guns in the air shooting at Japanese planes,” Flecky said in 2020.
George Flecky, believed to be Omaha’s last eyewitness to the 2020 Pearl Harbor attack.
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He was tasked with helping crew members battle the flames on another battleship, the USS Pennsylvania, which was in drydock for maintenance.
Their efforts succeeded. The ship escaped major damage even though two destroyers in the same drydock were destroyed by explosions. The Pennsylvania returned to sea five days later, armed for combat.
One Pearl Harbor memory he couldn’t erase: the sight of sailors jumping from doomed ships into flaming oil slicks on the surface of the harbor.
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said in the 2020 interview.
Five months later, Flecky completed his civilian contract and returned to Council Bluffs. But he didn’t stay long.
He enlisted in the Marines and was assigned to a security detail aboard the USS Charleston, a patrol gunboat operating in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The ship escorted convoys and provided fire support for the March 1943 invasion of Attu, one of two islands occupied by Japan a year earlier. Two months later, she escaped an attack by Japanese torpedo bombers.
Flecky’s sweetheart in Iowa, Clare O’Connell, traveled to California to marry him in May 1945, and they soon moved back to Council Bluffs. He returned to construction work, eventually landing a job as a construction manager at Creighton University. He was Assistant to the Vice President for Building and Grounds and Campus Planning when he retired from Creighton, after 39 years.
George and Clare raised 10 children. He was a devout Catholic and a life member of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Council Bluffs.
When his children were young, Flecky coached youth baseball teams. Well into his retirement years, he enjoyed golf, bowling, fishing and bridge.
He enjoyed watching and talking about all kinds of sports until the end of his life, Brownrigg said: Nebraska, Creighton, Iowa; football, volleyball, basketball. And the New York Yankees in baseball.
George and Clare were married for almost 70 years, until his death in March 2015. He survived her by almost seven years.
Services were held Monday at St. Patrick’s Church. Flecky was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, with full military honors by the American Legion.
“He led by example and continued to teach us to live in faith until the end of his long life,” Brownrigg said. “He gave us so many gifts to share with others. It is his legacy. »
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“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
George Flecky Jr. watching sailors jump into burning oil slicks during the bombing of Pearl Harbor