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Roy Wendell of Melville, a former World War II POW,...

Roy Wendell of Melville, a former World War II POW, is shown with memorabilia, including a helmet worn by one of the German internment camp guards, on Thursday May 16, 2002. Credit: NEWSDAY / Jim Peppler

Roy E. Wendell kept stories of World War II mostly to himself during the decades he embraced the role of family man and public relations executive.

Few knew that he had begged in vain for his best friend to abandon their doomed B-17, and had watched the shredded plane plunge earthward in a crash that killed five crew members. Or details of the lonely monotony he endured in a Nazi prisoner of war camp.

“I’m glad to be alive, and to be able to laugh at some parts of it,” Wendell told Newsday in a 2005 interview. “But there is a lot of sadness, too. My memories are good and bad.”

Wendell, whose public relations career included working with Fairchild Aircraft and technology companies, died of complications from dementia Sunday at Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook. A longtime Melville resident, Wendell was 91.

A 1941 graduate of Garden City High School, Wendell enlisted in the Army in 1942, trained as a navigator, and joined the more than 30,000 Long Islanders who served in the American military between 1941 and 1945. About 1,150 of them died in combat, according to official figures. Wendell, a lieutenant, narrowly avoided becoming one of them.

Hit by flak on his 13th mission over Germany, his aircraft could not keep up with the 800-plane formation he flew in, Wendell told Newsday. That left it as an easy mark for Nazi fighters.

“Too much was happening too fast for me to be scared,” he recalled. “Everybody was firing and yelling at the same time. That was coupled with the roar of the engines, the sound of explosions and a spreading fire. It was hell.”

Captured shortly after parachuting from the plane, he spent most of the next 16 months in Stalag Luft 1, a prison camp in Barth, Germany, where he remained until the war in Europe ended in May 1945.

A sense of optimism kept him looking forward. While still a POW, he wrote to the University of Notre Dame, asking if they would consider admitting him if he survived the war. The university encouraged his application, and he graduated in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a year after he married Regina Rau.

He was active with several area organizations over the years, including the Air Force Association, Notre Dame Club of Long Island, Long Island Press Club and the Boy Scouts.

In addition to his wife, survivors include daughters Gail Keller, of Medford, New Jersey, Carol Johnston, of St. James, and Diane Tabone, of Kings Park; and a son, Kenneth Wendell, of Melville.

The wake will be Thursday at M.A. Connell Funeral Home in Huntington from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 9:30 a.m. Friday at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Roman Catholic Church in Melville. He will be buried at Calverton National Cemetery.

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