John “Jack” Stauffer, 99, recounts stories of his life to his daughter, Patti Skornicka, with his honorable discharge photograph in front of them. Jack spent most of his enlistment in Guam. Stauffer served in the Navy during World War II. Cary Shaffer/Butler Eagle

John B. “Jack” Stauffer knew it was a mistake to talk to that Marine recruiter back in 1942.

Stauffer had ridden along with his friend that September day to Pittsburgh’s post office where his friend hoped to enlist in the Army.

“There was this big, fat guy behind a desk. He was a regular Marine,” Stauffer recalled. “I went over to ask if he had anything to read. He said no but go talk to that guy. That was mistake.”

Stauffer said by the time he left he was enlisted in the Navy and soon on his way to basic training in Newport, R.I.

“The other guy that wanted to enlist?” said Stauffer. “They wouldn’t take him because of his teeth.”

Stauffer was remembering his World War II military service recently at Lowrie Place, the assisted-living facility where he has lived since 2018.

The facility is planning to celebrate his upcoming 100th birthday with a party from 2 to 5 p.m. Aug. 7, the day before his actual birthday, said Carol Warner, the life enrichment coordinator for Lowrie Place, 100 Stirling Village.

“His family is renting the private dining room, and they are inviting his close family and friends,” said Warner.

Honorably discharged U.S. Navy Seaman 1st Class John “Jack” Stauffer, 99, Butler, holds his portrait taken 76 years ago in August 1946. Stauffer will be a centenarian on Aug. 8. Cary Shaffer/Butler Eagle

Stauffer was born in Butler on Aug. 8, 1922, the son of John A. and Aileen Stauffer. He graduated from Butler High School in January 1941 and made his life-changing trip to Pittsburgh in September 1942.

After his enlistment and basic training — “they taught us everything about guns and the military” — Stauffer shipped out of San Francisco, where he spent the majority of his enlistment.

Stauffer said he worked in an aviation supply depot. “We got planes ready for the aircraft carriers,” he said.

He didn’t have much good to say about Guam. He remembers it was hot and lacking in fresh water.

“It was very hot all the time. There wasn’t much drinking water or for the showers. We got the water from Saipan (a neighboring island) every day,” Stauffer said.

But the seaman 1st class had more than water to drink on at least one occasion.

“My dad mailed me a bottle of whiskey. I can’t believe it arrived intact,” he said. “I put it in my sea bag.

“One day I was sleeping and there was this commotion. It was V-J Day,” he recalled. One of his fellow sailors wanted the whiskey to celebrate the occasion.

Stauffer either sold or gave it to him, the details tend to get a little fuzzy after 57 years. But he does remember that “I didn’t even open the bottle.”

Events began to move fast after that. Stauffer was called into an office on Guam and told he was being mustered out.

Arriving in California, the Navy put him on a cross-country train from San Francisco to Bainbridge, N.Y. After declining an offer to sign up for another tour of duty, he was sent to the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

“I had to patrol along the ocean as a lookout for Nazi U-boats,” he said. After being discharged Feb. 16, 1946, he took a bus back to Pittsburgh and made his way back to Meridian and his high school sweetheart, Ellen Matheny.

Her letters and the occasional USO show were the only things to break up the daily routine during the three years he spent on Guam, said his daughter, Patti Skornicka, a retired school teacher and educational consultant from Canfield, Ohio.

Ellen (Matheny) Stauffer and her husband, Jack Stauffer, 99, are pictured here on their wedding day, Aug. 30, 1946. The couple was married for 73 years. Cary Shaffer/Butler Eagle

Stauffer joined his father’s profession as an interior painter and wallpaper hanger. “They worked together and did a lot of the houses here in Butler,” said Skornicka, who makes the 90-minute drive from her home to Lowrie Place at least once a week.

Ellen and he got married on Aug. 30, 1946, and raised three children, Patti, John H. and Tom. Tom Stauffer is a professor of architecture at Kent State University. John H., who did a four-year stint in the Marines in the late 1960s, died in 2021.

“They lived in Meridian. They lived there in the same house for 70 years,” Skornicka said. The Stauffers were married for 73 years all told until Ellen passed away in 2019.

Asked about how he has remained relatively healthy and lived so long, Skornicka credits her father’s longevity to keeping busy.

“He was always physically active. He had projects. He was always fixing something,” she said.

Stauffer himself had a simpler answer.

“Maybe it was good booze,” he said.