When Sam Sachs was a determined 29-year-old Army captain preparing to fight German troops in World War II as part of the massive Normandy invasion on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the last thing on his mind was surviving to a young-at-heart 105 and getting birthday greetings from thousands of people.

Sachs was the lead officer in a glider with the grim nickname of “Flying Coffin” because it had no weapons to protect itself from enemy fire. His glider was filled with machine guns, ammunition and eight soldiers whose job was to land behind enemy lines and destroy German defenses.

“We were just like pigeons up there as the Germans opened fire,” Sachs would say later. All he wanted to do then was survive the fierce enemy barrage. He asked God for 24 hours.

He got that time and a whole lot more. “Who could imagine I’d still be around 75 years later,” he said last week. “It’s a miracle. I think I had a guardian angel on my shoulder.”

Today (Sunday, April 26), Sachs will celebrate his milestone 105th birthday at his home in Lakewood, but it won’t be the kind of celebration he had hoped for.

“I was looking forward to a big party, but then the coronavirus took charge and that party was canceled,” he said in a video earlier this month asking for birthday cards, instead. Lakewood Mayor Todd Rogers asked to make the day “extra special” in a re-imagined way for Sachs.

The response has been overwhelming, said Yvonne Meader, owner and administrator of Mom & Dad’s House, which owns the retirement home where Sachs lives in Lakewood. She estimated that Sachs has received more than 4,000 birthday cards, including one from President Donald Trump, who thanked Sachs for his service to the nation during World War II. “In the face of uncertainty and danger, your sacrifices were critical to the defense of our country and ensured security and prosperity for millions of people,” Trump wrote.

Michael R. Brown, the mayor of Grand Forks, North Dakota, where Sachs was born and raised, has proclaimed Sachs’s birthday as “Sam Sachs Day” in Grand Forks. Last year, he received the French Legion of Honor, that country’s highest medal, for his contributions to the Allies’ role in the liberation of France during World War II.

“It’s been a crazy time,” Meader said. “Sam is also getting thousands of birthday wishes from social media.”

The celebration of Sachs’s birthday will continue on Sunday (April 26) with a procession of cars driving by his house in Lakewood, Meader said. Sachs will be sitting in a chair on his front porch to wave at well wishers, she said.

A stack of some of the more than 4,000 birthday cards Sam Sachs has received since he put out a video asking for cards. (Courtesy)

Sam Sachs, was in the Normandy invasion on D-Day 75 years ago, in full uniform at his residence in Lakewood on Wednesday, June 5, 2019. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

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Proclamation from Grand Forks, North Dakota Mayor Michael R. Brown proclaiming Sunday as “Sam Sachs Day.” (Courtesy photo)

President Trump photo on birthday card he sent to Sam Sach’s for his 105th birthday. (Courtesy photo)

World War II Veteran Sam Sachs speaks to a crowd during a meeting at the Joint Forces Base Thursday night, August 16, 2018 in Los Alamitos. Lt. Col. Sam Sachs joined the Army in 1931 and served for 32 years. (Photo by Tracey Roman, Contributing Photographer)



WW ll veterans, L to R, Sam Sachs, 104, Joseph Kirshenbaum, 99, Pablo Martinez, 95, and Samuel Mata, 94, were presented with the Medal of Honor Award by French Counsul General Christophe Lemoine, right at the Patriots Hall in Los Angeles, CA Thursday, June 6, 2019. To mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion four local veterans received the French Legion of Honor Award. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

President Trump’s birthday wishes to Sam Sachs. (Courtesy photo)

U.S. Army Ret. Lt. Col. Sam Sachs, a 103-year-old survivor of the D-Day invasion, talks about his life at his home in Lakewood on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. On D-Day, Sachs landed behind enemy lines in a glider before joining up with his company to go into battle. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)

Centenarian Grand Marshal Lieutenant Colonel Sam Sachs during the 22nd Annual Veterans Day Parade along Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach on Saturday, November. 10, 2018. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

Meader is asking those who want to participate in the car procession to gather at the shopping center parking lot at the corner of Woodruff Avenue and Carson Street in Lakewood. At 11 a.m. the procession will start with vehicles going north on Woodruff Avenue to Centralia Avenue where they will turn right, go east on Centralia to Conquista Avenue where they will turn right and go south on Conquista past Sachs’s house which is between Centralia and Harvey Way.

Meader said that no one should get out of their vehicles at the gathering point or anywhere along the route. “We want everyone to be respectful of others, stay in their cars and keep moving slowly past Sam’s house without stopping,” she said. “We want everyone to stay safe and healthy.”

Sachs has had an amazing life spanning two world wars.

He was born on April 26, 1915 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, just before the outbreak of World War I, then known as the Great War to End All Wars. The oldest of three children, Sachs said he felt a responsibility to take care of them.

“When I was 17, I did something that helped me the rest of my life,” he said. “I was a senior in high school, and I said I wanted to be somebody when I grew up. I wanted to be an officer in the U.S. Army so I joined ROTC.” He earned a business administration degree from the University of North Dakota in 1936.

With the outbreak of World War II, he was called into service as a first lieutenant stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was assigned to various posts in the United States and then overseas, serving as a company commander in Casablanca in Africa and Naples, Italy, in 1943. His job was to oversee logistics for men, ammunition, food and transportation. He eventually moved to England where he was involved in the planning of the D-Day Normandy invasion.

He participated in one other glider landing, Operation Market Garden, in Holland near the end of the war. He also helped liberate a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Sachs, who is Jewish, called it “an extermination camp.” He said you could not believe the horror of what had happened to the people in that camp unless you actually saw it. He said he had vowed that he would never be taken prisoner by the Germans, that he “was prepared to die for my country.”

His last military assignment during the war was waiting in Marseille, France, getting ready to board ships to attack Japan. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, and Sachs returned to the United States.

He continued to serve with the Army reserves until his retirement 32 years later with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

After the war, he worked at different jobs before pursuing his love of teaching. He got a teaching credential from USC. His first teaching job was at Wilmington Junior High followed by teaching positions at Compton Junior High, Roosevelt Adult School in East LA and, finally, Huntington Park High School where he taught from 1955-1982.

After the war, he also met Ida, his future wife, at a public dance hall in Los Angeles in 1946. They were married for 58 years when she died in 2005. They had three sons who won’t be attending their father’s birthday because of the coronavirus. One granddaughter, who lives in San Diego, is a teacher and had her students send cards to Grandpa Sam.

Does Sachs have any secrets to his longevity?

He said he follows three rules:

Moderation in everything you do. “Don’t go off the deep end.” Exercise, exercise, exercise. “It revitalizes your mind and body.” Manage stress by being positive. “There’s always a silver lining in every cloud. I’m always optimistic. It helps, he said, to have a sense of humor. “When I’m alive, that’s one day less than when I’m dead.”

He also revealed a secret about something else that gave him an incentive to reach 105.

When he was a young 95, Sachs said he heard a song, “Young at Heart,” sung by Frank Sinatra. He had always felt a kinship with Sinatra because they were born in the same year, 1915, but in different months, Sachs in April and Sinatra in December. Sinatra died in 1998. Sachs was struck by the lyrics in the song, “And if you should survive to one hundred and five, look at all you’ll derive out of being alive! And here is the best part, you have a heart start if you are among the very young at heart.”

“This is stranger than fiction,” Sachs told me last week, “but when I heard that song, I told myself that I was going to try and make it to 105. That has been a big driving force in getting me to 105.”

What about making it to 106 and would he ask God for more time like he did 75 years ago.

“Well, now you’re getting into rarefied air,” he said. “God has been very generous to me. I have been blessed in so many ways. I’ve reached my main goal of 105. How long can you go? I Don’t know. As long as I am in good health, I’ll go as long as I can. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.”

That’s not likely for a man as young at heart as Sam Sachs. Happy 105th Birthday, Sam!