No stopping this 98-year-old

At 98, Lester Kappel has earned gratitude for his lifetime of service: a big thank- you from the Long Beach Public Library and the naming of a fire truck in his honor at the Point Lookout-Lido Beach Fire Department.

Kappel works at the library, often delivering books to people who are unable to leave their homes. He joined the Point Lookout-Lido Beach Fire Department over six decades ago, and is still a member.

Kappel was born in Brooklyn nearly a century ago, and began coming to Long Beach with his family at age 7, spending summers in the City by the Sea until the 1930s, renting bungalows in the West End on Georgia Avenue. He became a full-time resident in 1939 when his family moved to Belmont Avenue.

He attended Long Beach High School, was involved in the biography club and graduated in 1940. His graduating class was the last before the opening of the new high school and middle school on Lindell Boulevard in 1941, before the two schools separated and moved to Lido Beach later on. (The former high school/middle school is now Lindell Elementary.)

A love of and fascination with aircraft had Kappel set on a future in aeronautics.

“I was supposed to go to the Carnegie Institute for Aeronautical Engineering”  in Pennsylvania, Kappel said, mentioning that he stayed only a brief time because it wasn’t the right fit for him. “I ended up going to Roosevelt Aviation School in 1941.”

The aviation school, which was located where Roosevelt Field Mall is now, consisted of planes, an airport and World War I-era hangars.

There, he studied aircraft mechanics, building and maintaining plane engines, receiving his Civil Aeronautics Administration license for airframe and powerplant mechanics in 1942, after one year. He still carries the license in his wallet.

He registered for the draft but was deferred while he was in school and was expected to serve after his graduation. Shortly after graduating in 1942, he was a plane mechanic, hard at work.

“I began working for Pan American Airlines and the [Naval Air Transfer Service Command],” Kappel said. “They were recruiting licensed mechanics to maintain aircraft across the world.”

The Navy had a contract with Pan Am to fly personnel and emergency equipment throughout World War II.

Kappel served in the Navy for 18 months after graduation before transferring to the Army. He was stationed in Casablanca, Morocco, and Ankara, Turkey, spending about a year in both. Working on aircrafts that mainly flew to Europe during the war, he remembered a specific model, the Flying Boat Boeing 314 “Yankee Clipper.” Only 12 of them were built.

The planes would land on water while delivering equipment, and the still water was sometimes hard to see. There was a crash.

“One Clipper was set to land in Lisbon, Portugal,” said Kappel. “It was a moonlit night, and it was extremely calm. The pilot didn’t know where the surface of the water was, and he flew directly into the water, crashing. After that, boats were sent out first to create waves in the water so pilots could clearly see where to land.”

Kappel returned to New York in August 1946 and married the love of his life, Gloria, in 1948. They were married for 58 years before she died in 2006. They had two children together, Jeffrey and Steven, and Kappel is now the proud grandfather of two grandsons.

Kappel began working for Pan American Airways again after the war, working on a Lockheed Constellation. The plane would be one of the first four-engine aircraft to take off from land.

He also worked with his father and brother, after he was discharged from the military, in a printing business in Manhattan. He did that before settling down and joining the Lido-Point Lookout Fire Department in 1958.

Kappel served three five-year terms as fire commissioner. He’s still an active department member, doing “whatever he can . . . including attending drills.”

The department honored Kappel earlier this year by dedicating a new fire truck in his name to honor his more than 60 years of service. Kappel said he felt “pleased to be honored” for his service.

“It’s very unusual, however, to see a piece of fire equipment dedicated for someone who is still alive,” he added jokingly.

When his involvement with the fire department started to slow, he joined the Long Beach Public Library’s staff in 1983 and still works there today, delivering books to seniors who cannot make the trip to the library.

Kappel has kept his passion for repair work alive at the library, fixing VCRs and DVD players and rebinding books. Librarian Eileen Pollis said she “would not know what she and the library would do without him there to help.”

“He has been a treasure to me on every single level,” Pollis said. “He loves to help people and he does that every day.”