An obituary with a somewhat unique ending?
"Henry Cervantes, farmworker turned WWII pilot"
"Cervantes is survived by his sister, Jennie Gonzalez, several nieces and nephews, and his longtime partner and friend of more than 60 years, Nancy Kahn. The couple first dated in 1964 when they met in the Air Force, staying together for 10 years before they broke up. Cervantes remained single his whole life.
'He used to say he was married to the military,' Kahn said. When the two reconnected after the death of Kahn’s husband in 2014, she was 75 and he was 90.
'We did everything together,' said Kahn of the last decade of their rekindled friendship. They took care of each other and enjoyed the mundane things after a long and exciting life. Hank, as Kahn calls him, was spry and agile even in his last decade.
But his health started to decline after he developed vascular dementia from a stroke five years ago. He was hospitalized after a second stroke in early March of this year and sent home on hospice care after he lost the ability to swallow.
Kahn said Cervantes died on the same date, April 7, as he’d escaped death 79 years previously when German pilots tried to ram his B-17 bomber out of the sky."
~ Jireh Deng
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