John Nasea, Jr.

JOHN NASEA Jr, BIO

John Nasea Jr. was born on June 13,1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His parents immigrated from Romania. He and his father attended the Romanian Orthodox church. The family moved to Detroit two years later. He graduated from Mackenzie High with honors in June of 1940 and worked as apprentice tool maker from February 1941 to February 1943.

Drafted, he served in the 101st Airborne, 321 Glider Artillery. He went ashore three days after D-Day, June 4, 1944. John fought in the battle of Carentan. On September 19, during Market Garden, he was hit from below just before the glider he was riding in landed. This ended John’s active participation in World War II.

John received a BS in chemistry from the University of Detroit (now UDM) in June of 1949 and a MS from Wayne State University in June of 1953. During graduate work at WSU, John met Mildred Hurt who also had a MA but from the University of Michigan.

John and Mildred were married on June 13, 1952 in Northwestern Baptist Church in Detroit and moved to Allen Park in 1953. For fifteen years they were members of the Allen Park Baptist Church but have been members of the Allen Park Presbyterian Church since then. John has served as an Usher, an Elder, a Deacon, and a member of the bell choir. When he was Treasurer of the Allen Park Council of Churches, John was responsible for the “Crop Walk” money which was collected by the individual walkers. Until very recently, he led the Men’s Bible Breakfast group.

Mildred and John have three children. Melissa (7/13/1953) has an MLS and is a medical librarian at East Carolina University. John (9/5/1956) has a BS and is a VP of Paytime, a payroll company. John is married to Joan (Kubis) (3/29/1956) who also has in a BS. John and Joan have two adopted daughters, Chelsea (6/11/1996) from Russia and Brittany (10/20/1998) from Siberia. John & Mildred’s third child, Sheila, has a BA and works in mental health in Doncaster, S. Yorkshire, England.

After graduate school, John went back to Ford Motor Co. to work on the corrosion of bright trim, oils for industrial fork lifts, and extracting valuable material from waste products. John retired after 30 years as a research and development engineer in 1984.

At the request of the Allen Park VA Hospital Chaplain, John became a “Friendly Visitor”; his first patient was Jewish. Between the Allen Park and Detroit VA Hospital visits, John spent about 7 years or 2,200 hours.

Questioning himself about what the most enjoyable time of his life was, his answer was “sitting in church holding hands with Mildred. During this period a young lady commented on their “marriedness.” John says it is still the best.

Mildred used to say, “My husband built those corner cabinets” in the dining room. John’s plan was based on one dimension, the distance from the window to the kitchen pass through. That dimension became the hypotenuse of the triangular-shaped corner cabinets.

With Mildred’s declining mental health, they moved to the Maple Heights Retirement Community in August 2009. Mildred passed away on April 23, 2010 at the day and hour that John sold their house.

For several years, John and his oldest, Melissa, took annual trips. They rode the train in the Canadian Rockies, rode a helicopter to near the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and visited battlefields in the southeast of the Netherlands.

Gathering what he could about Romania, John wrote a coming-to-America story and called it “The Naseas of Vladeni” and then “The John Nasea Story”. He then edited and combined them.

In February 2018 John gave a presentation on the 321 Glider Field Artillery Battalion .

In April 2018 John entered in-home hospice care. John died at home on May 3, 2018.