Octogenarians generally surrender the nickname of “baby” well before reaching their 82nd birthday.

But in the case of Robert Giambelluca, the moniker is still bandied about at least one weekend per year.

Giambelluca, a longtime resident of Fries Road in the Town of Tonawanda, recently left his new home at the ElderWood Senior Care center on Bailey Road to reunite with his World War II shipmates. He and seven other Navy servicemen from the USS Gustafson gathered in August in Fort Mitchell, Ky., for a couple days of camaraderie.

A native of Buffalo, Giambelluca dropped out of McKinley High School in 1944 as soon as he turned 17 years old. Within four days, he was shipped to Sampson Naval Base in central New York to begin basic training, a rite of passage shared by four of his older brothers.

“We all wanted to go to Italy so we could see our relatives, but it never worked out that way,” said Giambelluca, the 11th of 12 children born to Italian immigrants.

Instead, he was assigned to the Gustafson, a destroyer escort that conducted antisubmarine patrols. Giambelluca was a second-class motor machinist who maintained the engines and monitored the device that converted salt water into fresh water. The ship patrolled the Atlantic Ocean in North and South America, but Giambelluca never saw action.

“We went through the Panama Canal on our way to Hawaii when we heard the war was over,” said Giambelluca, who said the ship’s unused ammunition was blown off over the Pacific Ocean.

He didn’t serve for a long time, but he and the roughly 200 other men who made up the Gustafson’s crew quickly and strongly bonded.

“We were bunked four on top of each other. You can’t help but live with someone for a year or two and grow to love them,” said Giambelluca, who credited his shipmates with developing his social and life skills — and with taking a good portion of his wages in card and dice games. “I was just a youngster when I entered the war. I kind of grew up with them.”

In fact, Giambelluca was the youngest man on the ship, hence his preadolescent nickname. As with many of this nation’s World War II veterans, the number of surviving Gustafson crewmen dwindles by the day. In a report written about the August reunion — the Gustafson crew’s 64th get-together — the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that 84-year-old event organizer Art Libecki said only about 40 shipmates were still alive.

"It's sad," Libecki told the paper. "You hate to hear the phone ring. But we're in our 80s. What are you going to do?"

Roughly 2.3 million of the 16.1 million Americans who served during World War II were still alive as of November 2008, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs issued at that time. The DVA estimates that 900 World War II veterans die each day; using those numbers, that would mean that an estimated 1.9 million U.S. World War II veterans are alive today.

Military service is a source of pride for Giambelluca, who has a framed photo hanging in his room at the nursing home that shows him and his four older brothers who also served. Joseph was in the Army, Bill was in the Air Force, Ed was in the Navy and Charles became a lieutenant and Army psychologist at Fort Slocum, near New York City.

Also hanging over his bed is a framed copy of the final edition of the Buffalo-Courier Express, for which Giambelluca worked for 35 years.

The Gustafson was decommissioned in 1946, and he opted to return home rather than embark upon a military career. Within a year or so, an old friend recruited him to work as a truck driver for the Courier. He worked his way up to become the paper’s circulation director, then took a similar post with USA Today after the Courier folded Sept. 19, 1982.

“I never dreamed of being a newspaper man, but once I started doing it, I loved it,” said Giambelluca, who earned $45 a week when he left a job at a local cleaner to drive newspaper trucks.

He also met the love of his life, Josephine, during his first days back at home. The two married in 1947 and raised four children together. They lived in the Town of Tonawanda until her death in 2008, after which time he decided to move into ElderWood.

Giambelluca spends his days swapping stories with ElderWood residents and visitors (a recent visit by a reporter ended when one of his former Courier co-workers stopped by). The smile that he wore while rocking in his recliner and sharing his stories served to prove that he still enjoys every minute of life.

“I make friends easily,” he said. “My dad used to say, ‘Make a friend a day, and you’ll have 365 friends at the end of the year.’ I’m a guy who likes to remember old friends.”

Those friends include his former shipmates. Giambelluca hasn’t been to every reunion — he’s made it to more than 40 of them — but he intends to get to the next one, which the Enquirer reported will be organized next year in Kentucky by Frederick Hutchings.

“We know that it’s not much longer that we’re going to be able to do this,” he said. “But we pledged to do this even if only two of us can go.”

Contact Paul Lane at 693-1000, ext. 116.