Sunday, Nov. 01, 2009

Life story | Resolve defined this WWII vet

Austin Enzor was quite the athlete at Floyds High School in the 1930s and even more the scholar.

He wanted to go to college, but there was a problem.

"Our family just didn't have the money," his sister Polly Osborne said.

So Enzor signed up to take a scholarship test for The Citadel at Conway High School. He'd already arranged for the school superintendent to drive him to the school for the test, but when he got ready to drive to meet him, he realized his brother's car wouldn't start.

"So he just ran all the way to the school, six miles or more," Osborne said. "The superintendent then drove him to Conway, but the teacher administering the test said there was only 15 minutes left in a test that was supposed to take hours to take."

Enzor still did his best.

"And he got the scholarship in only 15 minutes," Osborne said.

That kind of determination led Enzor, who died Oct. 22 at the age of 93, through 18 months of being a prisoner of war in Poland during World War II.

It helped him survive being captured by the enemy after his plane was shot down, and gave him determination to survive an 86-day death march that killed 1,300 fellow troops.

At the end of the conflict, it led him to receive a Purple Heart and other honors.

"He was such a distinguished military man, and he cared so much about his country," Osborne said.

Being a "military brat" wasn't always easy, his daughter Sherry Voris said. But the benefits to living and traveling with her father around the world made the frequent dislocations worth it, she said.

"As dad would say, others read about history in books, but we saw it," Voris said. "We went to East Berlin when the wall was still up with my dad in his uniform as required."

Regardless of his current location, Enzor considered Horry County home, his family said. That's why after he retired in 1972, he chose to move back to Myrtle Beach and take on new challenges.

Military service kept Enzor from finishing his degree at The Citadel, so he enrolled at Coastal Carolina University. On the first day of class, Voris said many professors asked him why he was there.

"He told them he was there to learn," Voris said. "His career was over and he was there to learn."

Just as in the military, others quickly saw his work ethic at CCU.

"A lot of students would call our house and ask him for help with their homework," Voris said. "But that didn't surprise us, because our mom told us everyone asked him for help with homework when he was growing up."