Peg Dana, Sherry Muirhead and Charles Laskowski Jr. felt their fathers’ influences in many ways as they grew up.

Today as adults, these children of World War II veterans are in awe of their fathers’ experiences. Some have visited the sites of the battles, including Pearl Harbor, which was attacked by the Japanese 65 years ago today.

Charles Laskowski Sr., of Lawrence, spent 22 years in the Marines, retiring as a captain.

“He never hesitated to talk about World War II,” Laskowski Jr. said of his father. “I was enthralled with all that stuff, especially as a kid.”

Laskowski Jr. said his father’s military experience led him to join the Air Force, which he thought was a “better fit” for him. He became a mission crew chief onboard an E-3 AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) plane that flew in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq. After reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel and serving 23 years, Laskowski Jr. retired.

Sherry Muirhead lives in Eudora and works with computers and accounting systems for Kansas City Metropolitan Community Colleges. She credits talks with her father for spurring her interest in history.

Lawrence resident Vincent Muirhead survived the Pearl Harbor attack while serving on the battleship USS Maryland.

A few years ago, Muirhead traveled with her father to Pearl Harbor.

“He’s not an emotional person,” she said. “He talked a lot about the mechanical and technical things that you don’t ever read about in the history books.”

From left, Kansas University ROTC Marine officer instructor Maj. Jeff Daniels and ROTC Cadet Jordan Alley celebrate the Marine Corps birthday Nov. 10 with Charles Laskowski Sr. and his son, Charles Laskowski Jr. The younger Laskowski says his father's influence led him to pursue a military career.

Vincent Muirhead, now 87, retired from the Navy in 1961. He then taught at Kansas University, retiring in 1989 as chairman of the department of aerospace engineering.

“When I became an adult I realized how many times I could have lost him,” Sherry Muirhead said of her father. “I was very fortunate.”

Pearl Harbor meant that thousands of Marines would see combat in the Pacific Theater of the war.

Among those Marines was Charles Laskowski Sr.

When his family was young, Laskowski Sr., 90, took his family to Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Memorial. The battleship was sunk during the attack. That visit left an impression on his kindergarten-age son.

“My dad pointed out the flag flying over the Arizona,” said Laskowski Jr., who returned to Pearl Harbor as an adult. “There are still some old buildings there with bullet holes in them. It’s an amazing place to visit.”

Historic battle

December also is a month when many American veterans remember another battle, one that took place in Europe’s Ardennes Forest. In December 1944, the Germans launched their last major offense of the war in an effort to turn back the Allied armies as they approached Germany.

Al Sellen was 19 when he fought in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Now 81 and living in Lawrence, Sellen never talked much about World War II unless his children asked him, his daughter, Peg Dana, said. Dana, however, remembers a time when she was in grade school when her father used a blackboard in their breakfast room to explain the battle and what the “bulge” was.

Still, the full realization of what her father went through didn’t strike Dana until she and her husband traveled to Europe in 1993. Armed with maps and information provided by her father, they found the Mon Schumann crossroads area in Luxembourg. They parked their car and walked into the woods where her father fought and was wounded by artillery fire.

Surrounded by tall pine and oak trees, Dana and her husband found depressions in the ground.

“The foxholes are still there,” she said. “It was kind of spooky. You walk in there and you think, ‘this is where he was.'”

It has only been in the past few years that Sellen began talking more about the war, Dana said. He got out his Purple Heart and other medals to show them, she said. He also still has a piece of shrapnel that was taken out of his leg.

“It’s hard to know what the war did to him,” said Dana, who lives in Coralville, Iowa, and works at the American College Testing Program in Iowa City. “To us kids, he has always been a strong man but a quiet man. He’s not a showy person.”

Dana will not forget her visit to the woods where her father was wounded.

“He was only 19 then and I was much older,” she said. “You start thinking about how he could have been killed there and then I wouldn’t be here.”