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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
COMMEMORATING THE EXCEPTIONAL LIFE, COURAGEOUS SPIRIT AND GENEROSITY OF WALTER REED
WHEREAS, Walter Reed died at the age of 91 having lived a remarkable life that was touched by the deepest sadness and the greatest joy. He was a successful businessman, an inspiring author and speaker, and a tireless advocate for those who struggled with special needs. While he never forgot the anti-Semitism he faced in Germany that killed his family, or the prejudice that led him to change his name and hide his past for 50 years he had a strong desire to never be a prisoner of the past; and
WHEREAS, Walter Reed was born Werner Rindsberg in Germany in 1924 and spent his early childhood in Bavaria. In June 1939, his family put him on a train for Brussels as part of a children's refugee rescue program. Eventually he made his way to La Hille, France, where he and 100 other Jewish children were hidden from the Germans, barely surviving at an abandoned French estate called Chateau de La Hille. He was able to leave France in 1941 for New York, where his mother had relatives, however, his parents and siblings perished during the Holocaust; and
WHEREAS, when Walter Reed arrived in New York he became an apprentice to a tool-and-die maker and enrolled in high school. In 1943, when he was 19, he was drafted into the army. The army offered U.S. citizenship and Walter changed his name as part of that process. He shed his German name of Werner Rindsberg along with his German accent. He worked at Allied headquarters in Paris as a German translator who assisted with prisoner interrogation. One of his assignments was the denazification of the university at Marburg. Despite having only a high school education, he played a major role in deciding which of the eminent faculty could teach. After the German surrender he served in the Counter Intelligence Corps which had the task of denazifying the Germans; and
WHEREAS, after the war, Walter Reed attended...
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