By Ron Hayes
BRINY BREEZES — When the U.S. Army’s 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, Ed Manley’s job was to help blow up four Nazi cannons overlooking Omaha Beach.
He was 22 and lived to tell about it.
On Sept. 17, 1944, he jumped into Holland on a mission to seize roads and bridges in the key city of Eindhoven. Again he lived.
On Dec. 17, 1944, Manley and the 502nd Regiment held positions in Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge.
Manley was wounded, but lived to be captured by the Nazis on Jan. 3, 1945.
Imprisoned at Stalag 12A in Limburg, Germany, he lived to escape from the camp 41/2 months later. Now he was 23.
At 1:15 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 27, Ed Manley died in hospice care at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Palm Beach. He had lived to be 100 and a much loved resident of Briny Breezes since 1993.
Sharon Holden, the town’s administrative assistant, knew him well for many years.
“I thought he would live forever,” Holden says. “I loved that man. He was always in a good mood, joking around and doing his famous little dance.” “I will miss his stories, as everyone will. Not just about D-Day but about his wild and crazy life. He was one in a million. Now that Ed is in heaven, I hope he found all the men that were with him on D-Day. He always wondered what happened to them.”
In his life after the war, Mr. Manley was happy to talk about his experiences on D-Day and beyond, but quick to disavow any suggestion that he was a hero.
“A hero is a guy who does something intentionally to help out somebody else,” he would correct.
The U.S. Army disagreed, awarding him two Bronze Stars for his heroism in Normandy and Bastogne, a Purple Heart for wounds incurred while being taken prisoner, and two presidential citations.
On June 6, 1994, the 50th anniversary of D-Day, Manley returned to France and jumped into Normandy again. He was 72.
Edward Rodney Manley was born on Nov. 5, 1921, in New Jersey. His life before the war was nearly as colorful as his service.
“My dad died two months before I was born, and my mother was an orphan,” he once recalled. “She lived with showgirls and was the only one with a steady job. She got walk-ons on different Broadway shows and that would get her $5.”
When Ed was 3, his mother sent him to live with a babysitter, and at 5 he was moved to the Gould Foundation group home in Harlem.
“I had to learn to be streetwise when I was at the home in Harlem,” Manley said. “On Saturdays all the kids from the home had 15 cents for the movies. The street kids knew it. I wandered away from my group once and this 13-year-old boy cut me four or five times across the leg with a strap razor. I was carrying a broken Coke bottle and buried it in his solar plexus.
“They took me home, cleaned me up, and I went to the movies.”
Returning from the war, Manley passed the test to join the New York State Police. He supplemented his police salary as a flag man directing traffic and a runner for a concrete company dealing with their truckers. He also worked on a tanker on the Great Lakes, and as a lumber salesman and theater manager.
In 1951, he married Dorothy Ann Brower. She died in 1983 after 32 years of marriage. The couple had two sons, Scott and James, who survive him, and a daughter, Kimberly, who died in 2015.
Mr. Manley also loved Big Band music and dancing.
In 1991, he set out to sail his 28-foot boat from Ocean City, Maryland, to Fort Lauderdale.
He got as far as Briny Breezes.
When he stopped to fuel up in Georgia, the attendant asked where he was headed.
“Fort Lauderdale,” Manley said.
“Well, when you get to Boynton Beach, call this number.”
He called, and the same attendant met him by Two Georges. They had a beer and walked across the bridge.
“How do you get one of these?” Manley asked when he saw the trailers in Briny Breezes.
Ed Manley bought a lot for $15,000 and lived the rest of his life here, with his wife’s ashes on a shelf in the trailer.
“I was happiest when I was married,” he said. For his 100th birthday last Nov. 5, as friends and neighbors planned a party in the Briny clubhouse, Mr. Manley pondered his next 100 years.
“I don’t want to be around,” he decided. “We’ve got people going to the moon now, and we can’t handle Earth. But I hope you have half as much fun in your life as I’m having.”
Debra Boyle knew Ed Manley through her service as the Ocean Ridge Police Department’s community policing officer.
“He was an amazing man,” she said. “His eyes always lit up when he talked about being in the service, and why he went there.
“There was one time in late January, when he was getting ready to go to the hospital. He and I walked down the stairs and he did a little dance for the paramedics before he got on the gurney.”
Mr. Manley came home after that hospital visit, but returned to the VA Medical Center a final time Feb. 10.
Manley told The Coastal Star in 2009, when he was 87, that after his death, he wanted his ashes dropped in the Gulf Stream.
“I’m taking the cheap seats back to Ireland,” he said. “My family and friends can spend the money on a party.”
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