O'Mara (2)

JARVIS H. O'MARA (2)
Biography Jarvis Hugh O’Mara was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 09 November 1919, the son of Joseph O’Mara and Madilene (Gottlieb) Hoffman. He passed away peacefully at 10:23 AM on 18 January 2009 two weeks after suffering a major stroke. He was 89 years old. In his early years, his family moved a lot, as they recovered from the disastrous post World War I Great Flu Pandemic and looked for work. He attended many schools, including six different high schools. His mother married a second time, to Henry Hoffman, with whom they had a daughter, Alice, who was born in 1924. Jarvis was adopted by Henry Hoffman, and was thereafter known as Jarvis Hugh Hoffman. He was raised in the Jewish faith and traditions. They eventually moved to Chicago, where Jarvis was the youngest member of the Class of 1936 at Steinmetz High School. While at high school, he excelled in track and swimming. He was ready to graduate at the age of 15; but, was not allowed to until he was 16. During that “extra” year, he took courses and competed on the swim team to pass the time. After graduation, he started to work at the First National Bank of Chicago as a clerk at the age of 16. During the Depression years, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) at the age of 19 and worked in the American West, fighting forest fires, building trails and roads in deserts and restoring the La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, California. He always loved to visit the Mission in his later years and told many stories of how they used the same methods as the missionaries to make new adobe bricks from the remains of the old walls, while re-creating the water system, and replanting gardens and orchards. That restoration he worked on was the most complete of all the California mission restorations (it was eventually finished in 1951.) During World War II, he enlisted in the Army on 05 November 1941 at Fort MacArthur in Los Angeles with the intent of going into the Corps of Engineers to learn a trade for civilian life, with a duty station in either the Philippines or the Panama Canal. Luckily for him, the Army declined to grant his wish and sent him to the infantry. Had he gotten his wish, he would most likely not have survived the war. He served in various duty stations including Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), Maryland, as an instructor, and as a student at Virginia Tech in the short-lived Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) which was established in 1942 to ensure a continuous flow of technically and professionally trained men for the prosecution of the war. Selected enlisted men were assigned to various colleges and universities for academic instruction, after they had received their basic military training. That military training was continued under a cadet organization while he was at Virginia Tech. It was contemplated that most of these men would become officers. However, the critical shortage of infantrymen in the winter of 1943‐44 resulted in the virtual liquidation of the program in February, 1944, with most of the ASTP personnel reassigned to combat infantry units. He was sent to the 78th Infantry Division at Camp Pickett, Virginia, as it prepared to ship out to Europe. Somewhere between the end of the ASTP in February, 1944, and when the 78th shipped out to Europe in October, 1944, he volunteered for the 82nd Airborne Division, the “All American” Division, after passing the vision test by memorizing the eye charts beforehand. He was subsequently transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he earned his jump wings, and was assigned to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment (P.I.R.), 1st Battalion, Company “B”, 1st Platoon. He then shipped out to Wollaton Park in England. On 17 September 1944, he made his one and only combat jump in support of “Operation Market Garden,” also known as the “Bridge too Far”, which is the largest ever air born assault in history, and saw action near the Dutch town of Nijmegen. After Nijmegen, there were further combat operations until 10 November 1944, when the regiment was relieved by the 69th Brigade (British) and on 13 November, the regiment was at Camp Sissonne, France, for Rest and Recreation (R&R). On 16 December 1944, the Germans launched a surprise offensive through the Ardennes Forest, which is now known as the Battle of the Bulge. The 82nd was redeployed to thwart the German offensive. During this time, his unit saw significant, sustained combat action. Ironically, his original outfit, the 78th, which had been sent to the Ardennes as a quiet sector for newly arrived, green troops, got hammered by the Germans. After helping to secure the Ruhr River, the 82nd ended the war, past the Elbe River, by accepting the surrender of over 150,000 troops of the German 21st Army on 02 May 1945. On 02 May 1945, the 82nd Airborne Division and the 8th Infantry Division liberated the Wobbelin concentration camp, near the city of Ludwigslust, which was a sub-camp of the larger Neuengamme concentration camp. Wobbelin had been established by the German SS in early February, 1945, to house approximately 5,000 prisoners from other concentration camps in an effort to prevent their liberation by the Allies. Upon arrival, the Allies found over 1,000 prisoners who had died of starvation with the remaining 4,000 in appalling condition. Following the surrender of Germany, Jarvis was ordered to Berlin for occupation duty until December 1945. While there, he was personally selected to be part of General Eisenhower’s Honor Guard. With Japan’s surrender on 02 September 1945, he decided to not re-enlist and instead go back to school to finish getting his degree in geology.
He was transferred to the 100th Infantry Division, in Stuttgart. While with the 100th in Stuttgart, he was transferred to a Finance Company due to his experience working in a bank and was made responsible for a very large British bank account that was used to compensate Allied troops stationed in France. He was then shipped out to one of the “Cigarette Camps,” Camp Lucky Strike, near Le Havre, France, and then on to a troop transport ship back to the US. His last duty station was an Army camp outside of New York City. As an aside and of interest, is that sometime after the surrender of Japan, when he realized that he was not going to be part of the invasion of Japan, which was thought to be far worse in terms of casualties than what the 82nd had suffered on D-Day at Normandy, and before his discharge, he changed his name from Jarvis Hugh Hoffman back to Jarvis Hugh O’Mara. When asked why the name change by his son, Duncan, many years later, he said it was “for better economic advantage” meaning that as a Jew he would face less discrimination. In retrospect, Duncan thinks that the experiences of Wobbelin and the Battle of the Bulge, where it was widely known that the SS was executing Jewish Allied prisoners, left a permanent psychic wound. Somehow, this change seems to not have made it through the Veterans Affairs (VA) records, since his Army serial number was still reflecting his name as “Hoffman” much to his surprise and some consternation. The name change is also somewhat ironic, in that an Irish surname was not a great choice for any one from the Boston area who was looking for a name advantage, as his son, Duncan, experienced while living for a time in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Upon release from the Army, he took the long way back to California, stopping in Cleveland and Chicago to re-visit old friends and to see where he had lived and worked as a youth. Once in Los Angeles, he went to UCLA on the GI Bill, while working at the main US Post Office in Los Angles. He completed his degree (BA) in Geology and then went to work for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in various locations including the American South West, Alaska, Saipan, Johnson Island and Japan. After working for the USGS, he got funding to continue his education and was accepted for graduate studies abroad, in geology, at the world-renowned institute, ETH Zurich, in Zurich, Switzerland, and the Ecoles des Mines in Paris, France. While in transit on a ship, he met the former Frances Farwell of Milton, Massachusetts. They were married in the 1st Arrondissement of Paris, France, and lived in Zurich and Paris as he continued his studies. Upon completion of his studies, he and his wife returned to the U.S. on the S. S. Volendam from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, arriving in New York City on 22 July 1950. Once back in the U.S., he was hired by the Anaconda Copper Company and worked in Grants, New Mexico. After he was accepted to Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a year of further post graduate studies, he moved to Milton, Massachusetts, with his wife, and stayed with Frances’ parents. During this period, they had their 1st child, Duncan. Upon completion of his post graduate studies, he worked as an exploratory geologist for a subsidiary of Exxon (then Standard Oil of New Jersey’s Carter Oil Company) in Montana and then in the Outback of Australia, working for another Standard Oil of New Jersey subsidiary, Frome‐Broken Hill, Ltd. The family (Jarvis, Frances and Duncan) transited from Boston to San Francisco to Honolulu and then left Honolulu on 06 October 1955 via a Pan Am B377 StratoCruiser (Flight 841/08, Tail No. 90948) with an intermediate stop of several weeks in Nadi, on Viti Levu, Fiji’s largest island, before arriving in Melbourne. While in Australia, Jarvis participated in numerous explorations in the Outback, prospecting for oil and minerals. After Australia, the family returned to the U.S. where Jarvis worked for the insurance company, Liberty Mutual, in Framingham, Massachusetts, near Boston. During that time, they had their 2nd child, Hugh. Following a divorce, he worked for what was then Systems Development Corporation (SDC), the world’s first computer software company, as a computer systems data analyst, in Paramus, New Jersey. He was initially hired for his aerial ground reconnaissance skills that he had gained during large scale oil and geological surveys, and worked with the United States Air Force (USAF) Strategic Air Command (SAC). Over the years with SDC, he moved from offices in Paramus, New Jersey, to Omaha, Nebraska, and finally to Los Angeles, where he continued to excel in support of the USAF Satellite Command, working on reconnaissance satellite operations as well as the US Navy’s GPS satellite system. He retired in 1989, after more than 20 years with SDC. During his retirement years, he traveled, visiting favorite places from his past, including the Mission La Purissima, and continued to enjoy browsing through book stores, collecting and reading books from all interests and all places. He was a lifetime member of the Sierra Club. His only sibling, his sister, Alice Hoffman Dahlby, M.D., of Honolulu, Hawaii, passed away in 1973. He is survived by two sons, Duncan O’Mara, Lieutenant Commander, USN (retired) of Arnold, MD; and Hugh O’Mara of Los Angeles, CA. [Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Mortuary, Los Angeles, CA]
(courtesy of 'Romper') Grave marker for Jarvis H. O'Mara in the Rose Garden, Westwood Memorial Park. Los Angeles (Los Angeles county), California. Jarvis enlisted in the Army at Fort MacArthur, San Pedro, CA on 11 July 1941 On 21 April 1945, Pvt O'Mara was transferred from the 51st Reinforcement Battalion to Company B, 508th PIR. On 28 May 1945, Pvt O'Mara was transferred to the 101st Airborne Division, Note that, while his obituary ascribes his foreign service to have taken place entirely within the 508th, he was actually in the regiment for about 5 weeks.