Daniel Wolfe

Biography

Daniel Wolfe was born on April 16, 1930, in the Bronx, NY. It was a time our country was beset with the Great Depression. His father, a tailor earned his combat ribbons with oak leaf clusters in his battle for economic survival.

By making just enough effort to pass his classes in elementary, junior and senior high school, Wolfe earned an academic diploma in 1948. College was not an option, income was. In 1949 he left the Garment District, to become a switch tender-brakeman for the New York Central RR from where he was drafted for the Korean War.

By distinguishing himself when the Chinese ambushed his company, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with a “V” for valor.

Wolfe returned home with the skills he learned in the army. Since he could not apply these talents to civilian life he took aptitude exams under the government’s auspice at New York University. He was told he qualified for college. Wolfe entered the City College of New York under the GI Bill in 1954, was graduated in 1958 as a Biology-Ed major and then began teaching at Jane Addams High School. A young woman came to the school as a librarian. After a few weeks of dating she convinced Wolfe that life with her was the only option. They were married in 1962 and raised three children in Rockland County. After teaching 35 years Wolfe and his wife retired in 1995 and then moved to Boca Raton, Florida.

Shortly after, he received a phone call from his former sergeant, whom he had last seen 45 years before, as he lay severely wounded on a litter. Since Wolfe had helped the guys in his company write love letters to their sweethearts and wives, his sergeant asked him to write a newsletter for the veterans of company L.In 1998 thirty men and their wives came to a reunion at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The men, from the Third Division, 15 Regiment, Company L recollected the fun, the patrols, the raids and the tragic casualties.

His first book, Cold Grounds Been My Bed: A Korean Memoir, is the tragic and humorous story of his experiences in the combat in the army.

He went on to write, Seabury Place: A Bronx Memoir. This book recalls with humor his coming of age during the Great Depression, post W.W.II and finally being drafted for the Korean War.

Completing the trilogy is Coming Home, A Soldier Returns From Korea is his latest book. It combines his reentry into civilian life and stories about Wolfe’s parents, students, relatives and other Runyonesque characters.

One of his stories, The Running Board, told in the voice of children describes the Hindenburg flight over NYC, shortly before it crashes, was recorded for This American Life, NPR. Other stories have been published in The Urban Hiker, a literary magazine in Durham NC.

Daniel Wolfe lives with his wife in Westchester, NY. Currently he is working on a collection of poems for children inspired by the poems he writes for his grandchildren’s birthdays.