Nearly everywhere he goes, Nick Treslo, 86, wears a dark blue baseball cap bearing the name USS Engstrom DE-50.
Treslo was stationed on the destroyer escort during World War II when it helped other ships fight the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. Treslo, who has been diagnosed with advanced dementia, swells with pride when he speaks of his adventures in the Pacific, on the Aleutian Islands and in Japan.
Treslo, in his favorite cap, was honored last week by the Navy at Lee Manor in Des Plaines for his service from 1942 to 1945. The event was organized by Passages Hospice Dreams, which recognizes people like Treslo for their passions and hobbies.
Sailors and a group of 15 veterans attended the ceremony, where Treslo received a certificate, gifts and a pin of the American and Navy flags for his hat.
Originally from Albania, Treslo came with his mother to Chicago when he was 13 to find better opportunities, said his eldest son, Tom, 61. At 17, the elder Treslo signed up for the Navy and patrolled the seas around Alaska and the Pacific Islands for three years aboard the Engstrom.
Treslo didn’t speak much at the ceremony. He awoke just in time to meet the sailors, shake their hands and lift his right hand to his head when he saw the certificate.
“I asked him, ‘What do you think about this?'” said Laura Funk, a nurse at the rehabilitation and nursing home. “He said, ‘I love it.'”
