At 106 and 101, two Bay Area men marked more milestone birthdays

Sooy is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former WWII prisoner of war, and Kuznik, the last survivor of 14 children, is a retiree who spent some of his working years at a Bay Area motor car company and a foundry.

What are the odds of two men, 106 and 101, respectively, sharing the same birthday and living in the same assisted-living center in Vacaville?

Maybe not as utterly slim as winning the Mega Millions lottery but, by any reasonable guess, pretty darn slim nevertheless.

But there they were Friday at Cornerstone on Orange Tree Circle: Bruce Sooy, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, World War II bomber pilot and prisoner of war; and Robert Kuznik, the last survivor of 14 children and a retiree who spent some of his working years at a Bay Area motor car company and a foundry.

Sooy, six years beyond the century mark, and Kuznik, who reached triple digits last year, looked like kings for a day seated at a table in the spacious facility’s dining room, topped with birthday cakes and lighted number candles, party hats, curled gold ribbon, paper eyeglasses with the words “Happy Birthday” topping the frames, and white, gold, and black balloons floating above on a nearby wall, a celebratory banner affixed to it. To one side of the table were two posters — the numerals 106 and 101 in large black script — arrayed with memento photos of each man, an assemblage that told its own story.

It was hard to miss the sparkly sash each man wore across their chests that read “It’s My Birthday,” and equally difficult to ignore the several dozen residents, family and friends, and facility staffers who turned out to sing a full-throated “Happy Birthday.”

Someone asked the inevitable tongue-in-cheek question of both men: “What’s your secret for staying so young?”

“Wild women and cheap whiskey,” quipped Sooy, a Green Bank, New Jersey native. No surprise — the remark drew laughter.

Kuznik, born and raised in Springfield, Illinois, quietly said there was no secret but a Cornerstone employee, Jennifer Simmons, added, “Staying healthy.”

Wearing a blue baseball cap lettered with “Air Force Veteran,” Sooy also gained recognition for his service from a special guest, Maj. Alec Sharp, chief of cardiology at David Grant Medical Center on Travis Air Force Base.

Clad in camouflage fatigues, the major, soon to be promoted to lieutenant colonel, handed Sooy a commemorative coin to honor his military service, 21 years of active duty, 19 of them as an officer, including more than a year in a German POW camp, and thanked him for it.

Sharp’s daughter, Berlyn, a homeschooled Vacaville eighth-grader wearing her own sparkly sash denoting that she was the recently crowned Miss Teen California 2023, was also on hand to celebrate the special event for Sooy and Kuznik, whose actual birthdays are Saturday, when the two families families plan more private celebrations.

As told mostly by family members, the biographies of both men are tales of longevity and evidence that the men are members of the fast-growing age group in America, the centenarians, nearly 100,000 of them as of 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Speaking at times for their father, who suffers from hearing-impairment, Sooy’s son and oldest daughter, Mark Sooy, 74, and Yvonne Mitchell, 69, noted their dad joined the Army Air Corps in 1939 as an enlisted man but eventually became a commissioned officer and flew nearly two dozen B-24 bomber missions before being shot down on March 18, 1944, in Germany’s Black Forest area.

“Red Cross rations kept him alive,” said Mark Sooy.

Flanked by another sister, Carol Passantino, 66, Mark Sooy also told the story of how some young Germans recovered a section the bullet-riddled plane’s window, then stored it for 70 years before it ended up in the Travis Air Force Base Museum.

Their father also claims some fame for flying Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager three times in the late 1940s, when the celebrated test pilot flew the Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, launching the experimental aircraft from underneath Sooy’s bomber over Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

“We lifted Yeager to 24,000 feet, he got into the X-1, dropped 500 feet below us and fired his rocket,” Sooy, seated in a wheelchair, recalled in a clear voice.

As for being shot down and surviving withering anti-aircraft fire, Sooy expressed no fear about flying missions, but added, “When the 10 bullets hit my windshield, I woke up after that.”

He bought a house on Deodara Street in Vacaville in 1958 and retired at Travis two years later. Afterward, Sooy worked as a civilian on base, retiring a second time as deputy director of Logistics and Plans for the 22nd Air Force.

Sooy’s parents died during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic and he was raised by his grandparents. When he finished high school, he joined he joined Army Air Corps when Great Britain was at war. He was married in 1945 after the war in Germany and celebrated 67 years with her. She has since died.

In an email to The Reporter, Lourdes Dunham, activity director at Cornerstone, wrote, “Mr. Bruce is a legend” who loves Bingo and poker and exercising in the morning.

“He’s a coffee drinker and loves to chat and share his story to other residents,” she added, noting he has been a facility resident since 2017.

Mark Sooy said his father was still driving at age 100 (before he gave that up), has never taken a drink or smoked.

“He’s not going to say, ‘I could have taken better care of myself,’ ” said Mark, smiling.

Daughter Yvonne, touching her father on his shoulder, added, “We have been so lucky to have him in our lives for so long. He was a wonderful parent.”

Kuznik’s son and daughter, Tom and Joan Kuznik, were there to celebrate with their father, Bob for short, and offered a previously prepared written account of his life from his 100th birthday.

Their father, who also suffers from hearing impairment, developed “a strong work ethic” as young man, with an independence streak in his bones, noting he secretly bought his first car, a 1932 Chevrolet four-door sedan, without telling his parents.

Kuznik’s early jobs included working on his uncle’s farm, delivering newspapers, messenger boy, and restaurant server. As a young adult he was employed as an inspector for Allis-Chalmers tractor company.

The story continued, with one of his sisters-in-law in Springfield arranged for him to meet her nursing school friend, Margaret. They married in 1946 and had four children.

The Kuzniks moved to California in 1951 settling in Vallejo, where an older brother lived, and Robert was employed as an inspector at Hall-Scott Motor Car Company, a cleaning room foreman at H. C. McCaulay Foundry in Berkeley, and later a castings buyer for Grove Valve & Regulator Company in Emeryville, where he retired in 1984.

“All of Bob’s jobs required attention to detail, a trait that came natural to him and that surfaced in his hobbies of stamp and coin collecting,” according to wording in the prepared account.

After Bob retired, Margaret continued to work for the Solano County Health Department as a home health nurse until she retired in 1986. They moved from Vallejo in 1991 to Leisure Town in Vacaville, where they participated in the community lawn bowling league. Bob volunteered to help organize and set up the annual Leisure Town flea market.

As a couple, Bob and Margaret enjoyed cruising, international travel, and especially motor home travel with their grandchildren.

Tom described his parents as “inseparable during their 72-year marriage,” and his father became his mother’s caregiver when Parkinson’s “diminished her faculties.”

Even after moving into Cornerstone in 2018, with his mother living in a care home nearby, his father visited her daily and “was by her side sharing meals and offering comfort until she passed later that year at age 93.”