(08/31/1943 – 10/20/2002)
Gerald John Juers a.k.a. Jerry or Gerry, was the middle child of 7 borne to Harry & Helen Juers. But Gerry would only know a life with his 5 brothers, as his older sister Helen died before he was born. Gerry then lost his dad a few months before his 5th birthday. Born in the Bronx, Gerry moved to Oyster Bay with his mother Helen & his brothers, where they lived in the infamous 2nd floor apartment in the Moore’s Building, at 5 E. Main & South Street.
I always enjoyed being around Uncle Gerry when I was young… he was loud & boisterous & fun, and strong like a tree. He could carry me & most of my cousins on his back at the same time. I remember him being married to Aunt Amy, whom I kinda had a kid-grownup crush on… Aunt Amy was my favorite. They had two kids, my cousins Corinne & Jerry Jr. Gerry was kind of a bruiser on the streets of Oyster Bay, known my many as “The Whale”, and from what I’ve heard he had quite the reputation around town. He was a fiercely loyal brother and a badass. Sadly I lost touch with him after I moved away to Florida in 1978.
Sometime later, I’d say in the late 80’s or really 90’s maybe, he was injured in a pretty bad car accident in New York, and essentially became disabled. My dad finally talked Gerry to move out to California. My dad made apartment arrangements for him, & Uncle Gerry lived in Sacramento until he died in 2002. At the end he looked nothing like the man I remembered, while sitting at a piano bar with my dad & me, as we drank Grand Marnier and sang with the pianist after having dinner there. That was my last real memory of Uncle Gerry. I was contacted by an old flame of his before Aunt Amy, a woman Susan Hagelmann, who was really enamored with Gerry in their youth, & I have her to thank for the color prom picture you see here. Maybe I can get more stories from her.
After his car accident, his move out west was the catalyst for the Miracle of the Medals story from 1994. See, Gerry had been given his younger brother Roy’s military medals after Roy was killed in Vietnam in ’67. So when it came time for him to move, he only took what he could carry I suppose. I’m sure he didn’t remember Roy’s medals were in his dresser bottom drawer when he left. He had a roommate then, who eventually threw out that old dresser. In came James Knight, the Oyster Bay sanitation worker who picked up the dresser. Inside the bottom drawer, he found Roy’s medals, and eventually turned them in to the VFW Post in Hicksville. The medals were reunited with our family after no one really knew where they’d been the previous 15 or so years. It was a great moment in our family & Uncle Gerry was the key that opened that door. I’m grateful to him for keeping them safe, & they hang on my office wall behind me to this very day, in 2026.
So here are the few pictures of my awesome Uncle Gerry, in no particular order. It’s very important to the whole family to have as many pictures as possible. Since I didn’t have a camera at an early age, I have very little, so I rely on all of you (& whatever I can find on the Internet & Facebook) to get pictures of everyone. As you can imagine, with our large family, it’s a monumental task, so please help by emailing me whatever pictures you may have or uploading them here… we’d all be very grateful! Or, you can mail me what you have, I’ll scan them at high resolution & mail them right back, either way. Thank you so much 🙂
If you have any pictures of Gerry, please upload them here. It’s just like adding a picture to an email.
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Upload Pictures Here!
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Click Select It! to locate your picture on your computer. After you select it & the file name is shown, click Upload It!
The system sends me a message that it’s there. After that, I’ll add it to the appropriate photo galleries, thank you!
Eventually, I’ll add the ability to upload multiple images, but for now it’s one-at-a-time, sorry!
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