Before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in June of 1942, Clement Heitzman, grand marshal of this year’s Kingston Veteran’s Association Memorial Day parade, had never been outside the town he was born in 100 years ago.

That changed in a hurry. After volunteering with other recruits at the old Post Office on Broadway, Heitzman was shipped to various training assignments from the east to west coasts, ultimately winding up “halfway around the world” at Army Air Corps bases in India.

“My father advised me to join the Air Corps where I might learn something useful,” Heitzman recalled. Trained in machine repair, the only time Heitzman ever flew, he said, was between bases.

Heitzman was a senior at Kingston High School when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. His three older brothers, Lou, Bill and Francie, had either enlisted or were drafted. “But my parents wouldn’t sign for me to enlist until I finished high school,” he said.

Heitzman, who turned 100 on March 5, still lives in the brick house on Terrence Street off Mary’s Avenue that he and his father built after he was discharged from the Air Corps almost exactly four years after he enlisted. He remembered the overcrowded troop ship on which he and thousands of other discharged GIs sailed for home on choppy seas as one of his worst experiences in the service.

“We slept in bunks stacked six high,” he said. “I was lucky to get the second bunk.”

One of the highlights of his service, he said, was serving as an altar boy for Francis Cardinal Spellman, Catholic Chaplain for the Armed Forces, during his visit to his base east of Calcutta.

Heitzman is an honorary member of Kingston Post 150 American Legion which recruited him as grand marshal for the May 29 Memorial Day parade.

Post officers were casting about for a grand marshal, without much luck, when past commander Ken Friss, who lives on Hoffman Street, suggested Heitzman. “I knew he had turned 100 in the spring and that he was in the war, but I didn’t know if he was up to participating in the parade,” he said. The grand marshal, who is also “mayor for the day,” rides in a convertible from Andrew Street to Dietz Stadium. “Actually, he was quite thankful that we asked. We’re just happy to have him with us,” he said.

“It is a great honor to be grand marshal and most humbling,” Heitzman said.

Given his mechanical talents, the honoree worked at several gas stations and garages in Kingston after the war before joining IBM as one of its first employees in 1956. Heitzman retired as an inspector at the Poughkeepsie plant 30 years later.

Like most centenarians, Heitzman attributes his longevity to family genes and moderation. “He’d smoke the occasional pipe and he liked his Manhattans now and then,” his daughter Barbara said. “But that was pretty much it. These days he likes Stewart’s cherry ice cream.”

Heitzman had his health scares, though. About a dozen years ago he underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery. He had an aortic valve replaced two years ago. “I guess you can say that God has been good to me,” he said. That, and regular checkups most of his life.

At about 5-7 and a slender 125 pounds, Heitzman ran track at Kingston High. He still has his World War II uniform with its corporal’s stripes on one sleeve. “No,” he laughed, “I can’t get back into it.”

Heitzman was born at Benedictine Hospital, a stone’s throw from the family compound on Hoffman Street. There were nine children. “The baby,” former mayor John Heitzman (1990-91), died at 94 last year. Clement is the last of nine siblings. His wife Delores, died in 2014, Three of their five children survive.

Following Memorial Day services at City Hall, the parade will form up on nearby Andrew Street and step off at about 1:30 p.m. on the 29th.