Drive-by parade planned for Sunday to honor Charles City WW2 vet

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Art Zanotti of Charles City is familiar with parades.

On June 4, 1944, cheering crowds wildly applauded Allied troops as they marched into Rome as liberators, and Zanotti was among them.

Seventy-six years later, the drive-by birthday parade that will take place Sunday past Zanotti’s home in Charles City will be much smaller.

Christopher Anthony, who is manager at Otto’s Oasis in Charles City and a local history buff, is organizing the drive-by parade in honor of Zanotti, who will turn 96 years old this weekend.

“We just want to do a little drive-by and honor Art on his birthday,” Anthony said. “He’s one of our few remaining World War II veterans living in Charles City.”

World War II ended in 1945, 75 years ago, and Anthony said that only a handful of area veterans of that conflict remain.

The parade will start at Otto’s Oasis and depart at 5 p.m. toward Zanotti’s home at the intersection at Cedar Circle. The route will take cars past his house twice, once coming and once going.

Anthony said anyone who wants to is welcome to join the caravan and drive by, honk their horns and wave.

“I think that’s very nice,” said Mary Ann, Art’s wife. “We’ll be either in the garage or on the front porch, depending on the weather.”

Mary Ann was a National 19th Amendment Society member and was Charles City Woman of the Year in 1994. She taught elementary school in Charles City for 30 years, and at one time, she was heavily involved in community projects.

“I don’t belong to anything anymore, I just take care of Art,” she said.

Mary Ann met Art when he moved to Charles City to work at what was then Oliver Farm Equipment Company. Art boarded across the street from Mary Ann’s mother’s home. The two were married in 1952 and have been a couple for 68 years.

“I’ve been here since I was 10. Art came after he finished college,” Mary Ann said.

They raised three children and now have two grandchildren. Mary Ann said that Art has had some health problems recently, but is home now and hopes to be home for the Sunday parade.

Art Zanotti was foundry manager at Oliver — which became White Farm — before the tractor plant closed in 1993. He retired after 42 years of service at the plant.

Born in 1924 in Keota, Missouri, Zanotti graduated high school in 1943. He worked in coal mines for a few months before getting drafted, and served 22 months as an infantryman during WWII.

Mary Ann said that Art doesn’t say much about his WWII experience.

“I don’t think he really liked to talk about it,” she said.

Art did open up and share some of his war experience about 10 years ago in a special Veterans Day section in the Charles City Press.

“I’m no hero. Every one of us who went over there has a story like mine, or better,” he said then.

Art served in the European Theater, in Italy, in the 36th Engineer Regiment. He made amphibious landings, did bridgework and infantry. He initially landed in North Africa, served most of his tour in Italy, and ended up in Austria at the end of the war in Europe.

“I didn’t have a choice, I did what I was trained to do,” Art said in the article. “I fired my gun a lot, but never actually saw if I hit or killed anyone. We did a lot of laying down fire, shooting at random. Everyone was shooting everywhere.”

He earned a Purple Heart when he was injured while enduring German shelling, and shrapnel broke his M-1 rifle in half. Art called it “just cuts and bruises” and he didn’t need to be hospitalized, although 28 soldiers in his unit did.

That was at a replacement depot in southern Italy, where he and his fellow soldiers were pinned down for nearly a month in the city of Anzio. Art said that Anzio was “normally a beautiful resort town, but not then. It was a total mess.”

After Germany surrendered, he was all set to serve in the Pacific, but that changed when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the Japanese to surrender. Art returned to his home town in Missouri.

“I got quite a reception when I got home,” Art said. “My dad and I hugged so hard that I hurt his back.”

Art went to school on the GI Bill, and graduated from Iowa State with an engineering degree before coming to Charles City, where work at the tractor plant and Mary Ann persuaded him to make the town his home.

Art and his entire family visited relatives in Italy in 1966. Art’s father was an immigrant and his mother was a first generation American, whose parents were also from Italy.

While in Italy, he visited the site were he saw the fiercest fighting and earned his Purple Heart.

“There is a huge cemetery in Anzio,” he said. “You see that and you kind of wonder if it was all worthwhile.”