Stanley Lane

Silver Spring, Md. - Lt. Col. Stanley S. Lane (USA-Ret.), a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Army and one of the last living Americans to have served during World War I, died July 15 of natural causes at Bedford Court nursing home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 103 years old, and he was also a veteran of World War II and the Korean War.

Mr. Lane was married to the former Frances Antis of New London. The couple celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary together on July 4, 2004, shortly before her death in December, 2004. The couple met when he was stationed at Fort H.G. Wright, an Army Coast Artillery post on Fishers Island, N.Y. During breaks in his military service the family lived frequently in New London, where Mr. Lane briefly established a grocery business and where their son, Bruce, was graduated from Bulkeley School, Class of 1949.

Mr. Lane was born Samuel Levine in Warsaw, Poland on Oct. 1, 1901. He immigrated to the United States with his mother in 1908. He attended public schools in New York City until the eighth grade, participating in boxing, baseball, basketball and debate at the Bronx Young Men's Hebrew Association. He legally changed his name in 1930.

After Congress declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, Mr. Lane enlisted in the Army, telling recruiters that he was 18. He trained as a horse cavalryman with the 22nd U.S. Cavalry in China Springs, Texas, and also served with the 80th Field Artillery in Camp McClellan, Alabama, where he survived the worldwide influenza epidemic. He was honorably discharged in February 1919.

A series of subsequent stints in the Army as an enlisted man between the two World Wars took Mr. Lane to many military locales in the United States and to the Panama Canal Zone and the Territory of Hawaii. He was commissioned as an officer in the Army Quartermaster Corps during the national defense build-up prior to World War II, and he served as a captain on the staff of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in Cheltenham, England, during 1942. He participated in the Allied invasion of North Africa later that year.

He established supply depots and equipment maintenance operations for the 1st Division in Oran, Algeria before returning to the U.S. in 1944. Shortly thereafter, he was graduated from the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Mr. Lane was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1950. During the Korean War, he served as an instructor and department head at the U.S. Army Quartermaster School in Fort Lee, Va.

After his military retirement in 1955, he settled in Cleveland, Ohio, and worked for 12 years as a patent engineer for a subsidiary of the Caterpillar Corporation. Thereafter, he was a part-time federal programs officer for the Cleveland Board of Education.

He was a founder and the first president of the Cleveland Retired Officers Club. He moved to Silver Spring, Md., in 1993.

Col. Lane is survived by a son, Bruce S. Lane, of Chevy Chase, Md.; a granddaughter, Sue Ellen Silber, of Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.; and two grandsons, Charles, of Washington, D.C. and Richard, of Bethesda, Md.; three sisters-in-law, Selma Levine, of New York City, Mildred Antis Montanari, of New London, and Ruth Antis Solomon, formerly of New London; and six great-grandchildren.

Interment will be private in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington Va.

A memorial service will be conducted at the home of Bruce S. Lane at a date to be announced.

In lieu of flowers. donations to the Stanley S. Lane Memorial Fund, Riverdale- Bronx YMHA, 5625 Arlington Ave., Bronx. NY 10471, or to a charity of your choice, are suggested.