Merchant and WWII vet Paul Pomeranz dies

Paul Pomeranz, a World War II veteran who spent time as a prisoner in Nazi Germany and had a lifelong passion for art, died Friday. He was 86.

When Pomeranz was a child, his son Stephen said, he would draw and read while under the covers at night.

"He always wanted to be a professor. He always wanted to do art," said Stephen Pomeranz, who lives in Cincinnati.

His dreams, though, had to wait. After graduating from Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he enlisted in the Army at age 18.

He began with the 10th Mountain Division but, wanting to see action, he joined the Army Air Forces.

"They said we've got all the pilots we need and they put him in the tail of a B-17," Stephen Pomeranz said.

On his third mission as a B-17 tail gunner, Paul Pomeranz was shot down near Berlin. He survived a three-month, 600-mile forced march in the winter of 1945 and was later rescued by British troops, his son said.

Had his Gestapo interrogators noticed that his dog tag listed his religion as Jewish, he may never have made it home.

After the war, Pomeranz started a trucking company in Brooklyn. He eventually owned a chain of nine tire stores on Long Island called Transportation Tires. The veteran ended up living in Melville.

"He never had a chance to pursue his education," his son said.

That is, until decades later.

In 1997, at age 72, Pomeranz graduated from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville with a degree in history. He was known in school as the "grandpa graduate."

The following year, he earned master's degrees in art history and philosophy.

While at Post, he took a course in painting from Frank Olt, a noted Long Island artist, plus a ceramics class.

Then came the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. "Something just got into me," he said in a March article in Newsday. "Maybe I was inspired."

Pomeranz's subjects ranged from Roman emperors to pop icons. But much of his work recalled his wartime experiences.

His work began being exhibited in the last few years in venues like the Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery in the Art League of Long Island's exhibit in March.

Anthony Ogata, who helped him with his sculptures at C.W. Post's sculpture studio, where he often went to create artwork, said Pomeranz's last piece reflected his biggest priority, family.

It was a sculpture of acrobats, and he made it for one of his daughters, Ogata said.

Besides son Stephen, 56, Pomeranz is survived by his wife, Dorothy, of Melville; sons Neil Winter, 60, of Manhattan, and Perry Winter, 58, of Huntington; daughters Nancy Weintraub, 57, of Long Beach, and Sheryl Sokol, 55, of Melville; and 13 grandchildren.

His funeral and burial were Sunday.