D-Day Vet and 62-year Thousand Oaks Resident Turns 100

Leonard “Len” Zerlin, an Air Force veteran who served as a turret gunner in battles including the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, turns 100 this month and is one of the few known people who have lived in Thousand Oaks continuously — in his case, in the same house — for more than 60 years. In advance of his centenarian celebration, Zerlin spent time talking with The Conejo Guardian about a few of the chapters in his extraordinary life.

Born on December 10, 1923, in Brooklyn, New York, Zerlin was raised in a Jewish home. His Yiddish-speaking grandparents had come to the U.S. from Ukraine.

As an 18-year-old, he was mowing the lawn on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Aware of what he calls the black cloud hanging over Europe in the form of anti-Semitism, Zerlin enlisted as soon as he was able to and was trained on one of the more difficult and disliked aircraft of the war, the B-26 bomber. The craft’s primary mission was to drop massive amounts of explosives onto German positions behind the infantry so the enemy could not gain a foothold.

Zerlin arrived in Great Britain in April 1943 and was assigned to the 322nd bomber group based in England, supporting troops on the front lines in France, Belgium and Germany. He participated in his first mission that May. As a turret gunner, he manned a double-barreled gun in a windowed bubble on the top of the plane; it was capable of swiveling to fire in all directions except at the tail.

He survived 36 missions and earned the Silver Star and other awards. Among other experiences, he was in Paris a few weeks after it was liberated.

“Everybody asks me how I survived the war period and my state of mind because all my friends are gone,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s just God was willing for me to have a family. (I have five grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren, and they’re all doing well financially.) I went through the emotions of people dying around me. When I got home, there was nothing you could do to distress me. … Nothing frightens me because I survived three-and-a-half years of warfare.”

“Nothing frightens me because I survived three-and-a-half years of warfare.”

He says his whole life “has been dictated by my war experience.” For example, after hearing fellow airmen talk about what they would do after the war, only to come back from a mission and learn they were killed, Zerlin developed the habit of rarely planning anything in advance. He simply takes life as it comes, he says.

That’s how he settled in the mostly undeveloped and unincorporated Conejo Valley in 1961, a far cry from Brooklyn and the battlefields of Europe — boasting that as an advantage.

“My backyard was full of sheep,” he says. “We had a water tank in our backyard for water.”

At the time, California Lutheran University had just opened, and the Janss Mall was being built by Len’s friend, Larry Janss.

“It’s a remarkable period of our history because it was nirvana. It’s still nirvana,” Zerlin says.

He recalls Alex Fiore, “a wonderful city council member,” sitting every Saturday morning outside a drugstore and talking to constituents about what they wanted Thousand Oaks to be like when it became a city. (Fiore, a 30-year council member beginning at the city’s incorporation in 1964, died in 2002.)

One thing the area lacked back then was a temple.

“We’re Jewish, and when we came out here, we had no temple, and my son was ready to bar mitzvah,” Zerlin says. “So they gave us the Masonic lodge to have our service.”

Twelve families attended.

While they were still young, Zerlin’s wife developed multiple sclerosis and soon was in a wheelchair. Having evaded death in World War II, Zerlin felt no sense of loss but simply installed winches and other equipment all over the house to help move her from one place to another.

“For 35 years, she was in a wheelchair, and it never bothered me,” he says. “I never felt negative about anything. I don’t allow it to penetrate my life because negativity creates poison.”

She died in 2009, and Len testifies, “We were married 62 years. Happy marriage. Delightful marriage. Beautiful lady. Gorgeous lady. I have no complaints.”

He spent his career mostly in semiconductors with Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, but the crux of his life was in the war. His accounts of that few years “go on and on,” he says. “It’s almost like I make up stories, but it’s true.”

His in-home museum of artifacts, awards and historical items related to his life and the war in which he fought is a monument to that fact.

And after 62 years, Zerlin still considers Thousand Oaks to be “nirvana.”

“I don’t think there’s a place in the world equal to Thousand Oaks.”

“I don’t think there’s a place in the world equal to Thousand Oaks,” he told the Guardian. “Find a place in the United States that has a library open seven days a week. Look at the colleges we have here. Everything is within an hour’s drive. Everything. The weather conditions. The beach is a half hour. You can be in Santa Barbara in an hour. You can be in L.A. if you want to in an hour. We have all the attributes. We have Moorpark, a gorgeous place now. Simi Valley. Everything’s here. The people, the quality of life, the lowest crime rate.”

His children — teachers, physicians and more — have all made him proud, and two of them live locally. They are congregating soon for his triple-digit celebration.

“My family is coming from all over the country to give me a surprise birthday party,” Zerlin says wryly. “I got a call from some newspaper that wanted to be part of the party, but only my bloodline is coming to my party. It’s too solemn an event to have photographers.”

Zerlin remains “very thankful I’m able to function and enjoy my grandchildren, and they visit me all the time,” he says.

He wrote five books, continues to host visitors and interviewers at his home, and makes speeches for groups such as the Rotary Club.

As for advice from his vantage point at an advanced age, “I’ll give it to you very simply,” he says. “If you carry one ounce of emotional baggage, in time, it will result in one ton of poison. Don’t complain. When things happen, do something. Negativity is a destructive force.”

In farewell, Zerlin jokingly asked the reporter to write nice things about him, then added, “I really don’t care. It doesn’t enhance my life because I’m at the top of the pyramid anyway. Where could I go?”