Lawrence Breeze

Lawrence Edward Breeze, 94, died Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, at Southeast Hospital in Cape Girardeau.

He was born June 3, 1922, on a farm outside Chillicothe, Missouri, the only child of Daniel S. and Clara Griner Breeze.

He attended a one-room country school and graduated from Lock Springs (Missouri) High School.

After induction into the Army in November 1942 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he was sent for training with a field-artillery battery that was part of the newly formed 13th Armored Division. Six months later, he was admitted into the Army Specialized Training Program to study engineering. He spent three terms at the University of New Hampshire. A few months before D-Day in Europe, the engineering part of ASTP was terminated, and he was sent to the 78th Infantry Division in Virginia, where he joined one of three infantry regiments, the 311th. In the fall of 1944, the 78th embarked for Europe. On Dec. 9, his regiment was sent into action in a heavily forested part of Germany a few miles from the Belgian border. Exactly a week later, the Germans launched what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The 78th had seized an area vital to German supply, and the division was ordered to hold at all costs. It was costly in casualties, but the 78th held the far northern shoulder of the Bulge. On Jan. 31, 1945, Breeze received the Combat Infantryman Badge, something that remained a source of great pride for the rest of his life.

On March 9, his company crossed the Rhine on the bridge at Remagen. He was awarded the Bronze Star medal for action at Honnef, Germany, on March 11, 1945. Later, he received a second such medal to be displayed as an oak-leaf cluster on the ribbon of the first Bronze Star. In addition, he was awarded three small bronze battle stars to affix to his European Theater ribbon to designate the Ardennes (the Bulge), Rhineland and Central European campaigns. He came home with the 29th Infantry Division and was discharged in January 1946 at Jefferson Barracks.

Many years later, he wrote an account of his war years for the benefit of his children. In 2009, the Regional History Center at Southeast Missouri State University published his account as a book, "From Farm to Front, An Innocent Goes to War, 1942-1946."

He was always grateful to the Army for giving him a good start in higher education and deeply appreciative of the GI Bill that enabled him to get an undergraduate degree from Missouri Valley College at Marshall, as well as master and doctoral degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

He began a 40-year teaching career at Mayview (Missouri) High School and continued with a teaching assistantship (later half-time instructor) at Mizzou.

His first full-time college position was with Jacksonville Junior College in Florida (1952 to 1956). There, in his first class, he met the young woman who would become his cherished wife and lifelong companion, Alice Elizabeth Miller. They were married March 25, 1955 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Jacksonville.

He took an active part in the transition from J.J.C. to Jacksonville University and sponsored the first graduating class in 1959. He was named Professor of the Year in 1965.

He came to Southeast Missouri State University in 1966, where as professor of history, he taught courses in Western Civilization, Modern Britain and 20th Century Europe. His specialty was the Victorian period, and in 1994, he published a well-received book, "The British Experience with River Pollution, 1865-1876." He was the third professor to teach in the Missouri London Program (1984). His last few years at Southeast, before retiring in 1989, were made especially pleasant by his association with students in the history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta.

He was always very proud that his children followed in the professional paths of their parents: teaching and librarianship.

While living in Jacksonville, he was active in Arlington United Methodist Church, serving as lay delegate to the Florida Annual Conference and also as an officer in the Conference Historical Commission. He was a member of Centenary United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau. His great interest in Methodism led to some writing and publishing on Methodist topics. Until recent years, he and Alice spent their winters on St. Simons Island, Georgia, an opportunity for him to visit the areas where John and Charles Wesley lived in the 1730s. In earlier years at Centenary UMC, he taught fifth- and sixth-grade Sunday school and served two terms as president of Methodist Men.

He enjoyed traveling, and after Alice's retirement from Kent Library in 1992, they took several bus and train trips and a few cruises. In 2000, they sailed to Europe and spent the summer there. When physically no longer able to travel, he enjoyed reliving these experiences through the journals and scrapbooks Alice prepared.

He was preceded in death by his parents and is survived by his wife, Alice; daughter and son-in-law, Alison Jean and Michael Guy Mead of Lake City, Georgia; and son and daughter-in-law Daniel Miller and Christel Striggow Breeze of Hohenfels, Germany.

Visitation will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday at Ford and Sons Mount Auburn Funeral Home.

Interment will be at a private service at a later date at the Missouri Veterans Cemetery at Bloomfield.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorials be made to the Breeze Graduate Scholarship in History or the Breeze Library Endowment for History, administered by the Southeast Missouri University Foundation.

Online condolences may be shared at www.fordandsonsfuneralhome.com.