Mary Margaret Olohan |Social Issues Reporter
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A 104-year-old California World War II veteran received over 200,000 cards for Valentine’s Day.
Marine Corps veteran Major Bill White said he is “floored” to have received so many Valentine’s Day cards. The veteran, who earned a Purple Heart in World War II after surviving the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, spoke Wednesday with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum about the thousands of cards and his service in the U.S. Marine Corps.
“It just floored me. This is something that has never happened to me before in my life, and I doubt this will ever happen again!” he told MacCallum. (RELATED: New England Patriots Player Ben Watson Emphasizes That ‘Men Have To Stand Beside The Women We Impregnate’)
WATCH:
One of White’s friends launched the social media campaign “Operation Valentine” to help White obtain 100 valentines in order to commemorate his life, Reuters reported. The friend asked both friends and strangers to send White cards for Valentine’s Day.
But the California veteran told MacCallum that he received over 200,000 cards before Valentine’s Day even arrived Friday, Fox News reported.
“It’s something I’ve never heard of or seen,” he said. “All of a sudden here, like a ton of bricks. I’m sort of speechless.”
White received so many cards that his family recruited friends and strangers to help open the mail and read all the cards, according to Reuters.
“You just go from year to one year after the other, and then 104 working on 105,” White told MacCallum, regarding his 104 years. “Just the same as a lot of other people do.”
“Right now, I am considered to be the oldest living marine in the Marine Corps. About the other services, I do not know,” he said. “I know that I am theoretically the oldest member of the United States Marine Corps.”
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