by Sharon Kwaak
Clinton Kwaak died on D-Day when he stepped on a land mine on Omaha Beach. He was a radio technician in the Army's 1st Division. He was a corporal. He was 19 years old. "He was my great-uncle," said 17-year-old Sharon Kwaak of North Babylon, who as a seventh-grader in Sayville began assembling a family tree and discovered she had a relative who was killed on the day the Allies invaded Europe. She also realized an uncle and a cousin were named after him to preserve his memory. The family tree shows Clinton Kwaak was born the day before Christmas in 1924. He grew up in West Sayville as one of seven children in a family that made a living as baymen.
Kwaak enlisted in the Army in February, 1943, and served in North Africa and Sicily before being assigned to the Normandy invasion. His only surviving sister, Elizabeth Cooper of Florida, once described her brother as an "impeccable dresser" who played the saxophone and guitar, and worked at Radio City Music Hall before entering the Army. He once wrote to her that he liked the Army, but thought the killing was inhumane. She inherited his posthumously awarded Purple Heart.
