Peter Paul “Rupy” Ruplenas, age 97, died at the Martinsburg VA Hospice on Saturday, April 16, 2016.
Born Oct. 5, 1918, in South Boston, Massachusetts, also known as “Southie,” to John Ruplenas and Dorothy Warekojis.
He attended South Boston High School.
While living in South Boston, Rupy taught Sunday school and ran track. He received many track and field awards and ran events as long as a 20 mile road race.
In 1941, he met Hazel Elena Rice on a blind date and married her six weeks later. They remained happily married for 75 years, Hazel passed away in 1986 and Peter never remarried.
On their honeymoon in Washington, D.C., he raced, and beat, the elevator in the Washington Monument to the top, to the amazement of his young bride.
He also placed third in a race against Olympian Roger Bannister in England.
A reason for ‘Rupy’s’ longevity may be his love for running.
Rupy joined the United States Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbor on June 24, 1941.
He completed basic training in Dover, Delaware.
After basic training, Peter followed a two week course in the Photography School at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field.
He also served in Miami, Florida, with the 9th Anti Submarine Squadron.
He was then stationed in Sudbury Suffolk England with the 486th (Heavy) Bomb Squadron.
He was able to fly along on several bombing raids and capture some amazing photos.
During his service with the Mighty 8th Air Force, they, along with the British, helped change the tide of the war and weaken Germany through round the clock bombings.
Rupy flew on several bombing raids and made it back, by the grace of God.
After WWII, Peter went back to South Boston and made razor blades at Gillette, until re-enlisting in 1948.
He was deployed to Japan in 1949, where a few years later his first son, David, was born in Sendai.
During the Korean conflict, Rupy suffered from frostbite, was blown 20 feet in the air from a tank that exploded 50 feet in front of him.
He sustained permanent back damage from flying into a rock during another heavy battle.
He lost part of his hearing from the constant artillery shelling around him.
For two weeks, he worked covertly with “Rice’s Raiders” an anti-guerrilla team, belonging to the 7th Infantry Division (also known as the “Benedae Group”). They went behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy by destroying their weapons and incinerating any huts or houses that gave them shelter.
When the 7th Infantry Division reached the Manchurian border, Rupy reached the Yalu River as the third American.
He received a special medal for these actions.
Rupy recalled, “It went from 60-70 degrees when we first landed to 32 below. I worked day in and day out, hardly any days off because I loved my job.”
After the Korean war, he spent 10 years in Japan and the Far East photographing many generals, dignitaries and celebrities like Johnny Cash, Sugar Ray Robinson, Frank Sinatra, General MacArthur, Bob Hope and hundreds more.
He also taught medical photography and was the chief photographer at Murphy Army Hospital in Boston.
When the Vietnam war came, he was shipped off to Hawaii, joining the Department of Army Special Photographers Organization, otherwise known as DASPO. They were the very elite photographers of the Vietnam War.
Rupy was 50 while most of his fellow photographers that he trained were in their 20’s.
During this time, he served ‘in country’ in Vietnam, where a sniper’s bullet hit him and shattered his right knee.
He ended his career by serving at White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas.
He retired in 1970 as sergeant first class.
During his amazing career, he covered three wars: World War II, Korean, and Vietnam.
He may have been the only one to serve in all three of those wars as a combat photographer.
In Korea and Vietnam, his work was never judged lower than the top 3 percent of all combat photographers. On three different occasions, his work was judged the best of the month over all the other photographers.
He was injured many times and received many honors.
Peter continued to live a full and active life after his retirement.
He was the manager of the photography department at Kmart in El Paso, Texas.
He worked for the GPO in Washington, D.C., until retiring in 1980.
He lost his beloved wife, Hazel, in 1986; and his son, David, in 1994.
During the final two years of his life, Peter and his younger son, John, were best friends and did many things together. They went to several reunions and enjoyed life to its fullest.
He enjoyed sitting at the WWII Memorial on Saturday afternoons talking to people and going to the Men’s Mission in Martinsburg on occasion to help feed the men and talk with them.
His son has self published five books on Rupy.
In 2013, Rupy met R. Lee Ermey and rode in the Rolling Thunder parade and was the grand marshall in Brunswick Maryland on Veterans Day.
In 2014, when he was 95, he parasailed 800 feet in St. Maarten, breaking the record age of 89.
In August 2015, he sailed from New York City to Southampton, England, on the Queen Mary, and later he was given a parade through the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, in a WWII jeep.
On Friday, Sept. 25, 2015, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, with 40,432 in attendance, Rupy was honored with a rousing standing ovation right before the National Anthem.
In October 2015, in Omaha, Nebraska, at the Mighty Eighth Force Reunion, he rode one final time inside a B25 Miss Mitchell bomber. They thanked him with a second flyover of Omaha.
A week later, he was the oldest person ever to be baptized by Phil Robertson on a Duck Dynasty cruise. He was given a standing ovation and was saluted by Lee Greenwood at his concert on that cruise. Si Robertson, Sammy L. Davis (Medal Of Honor recipient) and Rupy all saluted each other.
Peter loved to sail and went on many cruises with his son.
He loved to sit at the veterans get-togethers and swap war stories.
On Nov. 11, Veterans Day in Busan, South Korea, he was awarded the “Ambassador For Peace” medal.
He also revisited the DMZ in Panmunjom, where he had photographed the truce talks 52 years earlier.
One month later, on Dec. 10, Rupy was admitted to the VA Hospice.
“I feel pretty proud of what I’ve done. Without a camera, I’m nothing,” said Rupy.
Peter is survived by his son John; and his granddaughter, Elena.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” — John 15:13
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to one of these charities he liked : Fisher House Foundation or Greenfield Children’s Home in Roatan, Honduras which he visited. These may be sent to P.O. Box 512, Gerrardstown, WV 25420.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 3, 2016, at First Baptist Church, 634 Middleway Pike, Inwood, with Pastor Devin Ward officiating.
Later in the year, hopefully on his birthday, he will have a formal military service at Arlington National Cemetery, where his beloved wife, Hazel, is buried.
