People who knew Tony Stein before World War II described him the same way. Quiet. Athletic. Determined. A kid who grew up poor in Dayton during the Great Depression and put everything he had into whatever he did.
His mother tried to keep him from enlisting. He told her it was his duty. He owed it to his country.
In February 1945, Marine Corporal Tony Stein landed on the black sand beaches of Iwo Jima in the first wave of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Enemy fire pinned the Marines down almost immediately. Stein grabbed a homemade machine gun he called the "Stinger" and charged directly into Japanese positions, firing while standing out in the open.
But what his fellow Marines remembered most was not the weapon or the charge. It was what he did next. Again and again, Stein crossed open ground under enemy fire to carry wounded Marines to safety, then turned around and went back in. By the end of the day, he had done it more times than anyone could count.
For those actions, Stein received the Medal of Honor. He is the only World War II recipient from Dayton.
He was killed in combat just days later. He was 23 years old.
Eleanor Sluzis grew up next door to the Stein family and later became the owner of Dayton's Amber Rose restaurant. She remembered Tony this way.
"Tony was a raw boned, rugged kid who put his heart and soul into everything he did. He was a child of destiny who became a leader of men."
Recently, Marine veteran and Veterans' Voices producer Zack Silver sat down with two members of Stein's extended family. Susan Jones, whose mother was Stein's cousin, and Susan's daughter Julie Lewis. Together, they looked through a family scrapbook filled with faded photographs, wartime letters, and newspaper clippings saved for over 80 years.
Lewis pulled out a clipping from the Dayton Herald, dated February 20, 1946. In it, Stein's mother, Rose Stein Parks, described the night she knew her son was gone, before any official word had come.
"I said to my daughter that night, Tony's dead. Our house shook, the furnace door blew clear off and across the room. The plaster in the front room cracked from one side to the other. And I had the strangest feeling all over that something terrible had happened."
Lewis said people sometimes hear what Stein did on Iwo Jima and say it sounds impossible. She understands the reaction.
"You have to know who he was to have it make sense," she said. "When you think about how he learned to be athletic, to adapt and overcome, it starts to come together."
Jones said she has told the story to grandchildren who reach for their phones mid-conversation. Not to tune out, but to look him up. To find more.
"Their eyes get all big," she said.
Stein's name is still on this city. Drivers cross the Tony Stein Memorial Bridge on Kiwi Street. Tony Stein Way runs through the neighborhood where he grew up. The Marine Corps, as it does for all fallen, keeps his memory in its own way. At every Marine Corps ball, there is a table set for the lost and a toast for every war.
Lewis hopes that curiosity continues.
“We must never let the memory of Tony or his legacy die,” she said. “The younger generation needs to know of him.”
