The reluctant soldier

CARY -- Josef Andreas Kiesenhofer fought for the losing side in World War II then lived to raise a family in America.

The first fact allowed Kiesenhofer to accomplish the second.

Kiesenhofer, who died Nov. 9 at 96, lived another version of the immigrant story.

"My mother said my father came back from the war quite different," says son Josef Kiesenhofer, known as Joe. "For a long time, he slept on the floor. He didn't want to work in a shop anymore. He wanted to be outdoors and have as much autonomy as possible."

Kiesenhofer brought his wife, Gertraud, mother, Maria, and son to the U.S. in 1953 and found that life on farms in Raleigh and Morrisville.

He was frugal and meticulous, witty and charismatic. He was a native of Schönau bei Berchtesgaden, Germany, and a North Carolinian who wore a UNC sweatshirt just to tweak his N.C. State fan of a son.

"It's hard to describe him except I've never met anyone who worked as hard as he did to make it better for everyone else," granddaughter Heidi Kiesenhofer says.

Kiesenhofer would have been a cabinetmaker in Bavaria without World War II.

He fought mostly on the Eastern Front, earning a medal during Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union, with Germany's 1st Mountain Division Infantry. While giving some of his best years, from the age of 27 to 32, to the war, he witnessed plenty of horrific things during history's deadliest war.

Having run out of water on the way to the Russian front, Kiesenhofer and his fellow soldiers drank from local streams only to find decomposing bodies upstream.

When shooting stopped at war's end, Kiesenhofer and other soldiers were resting when they heard gunshots. From atop his motorcycle, Kiesenhofer looked over a nearby wall and saw people being executed.

Kiesenhofer rarely discussed what he had to do while fighting. Still, he was no fan of Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.

He hated being lumped in with those "fanatics." Once, while playing cards in a German tavern, someone in the crowd belched. Kiesenhofer called out "Heil, Hitler!" The joke bought him a night in jail.

"He didn't talk about it often, but those were the reasons why he wanted to come [to the U.S.]," Heidi Kiesenhofer says. "One thing that stands out to me is how different his generation was and what he endured compared to us."

After the war, Kiesenhofer worked as a handyman in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a mountain resort area popular with American tourists.

David Cozart, a Duke University graduate and U.S. soldier working with war refugees, befriended Kiesenhofer and encouraged him to come to the U.S.

Sponsored by Cozart, the Kiesenhofers arrived at Ellis Island on a dark January day in 1953. The next day, they began clearing trees on Cozart's chicken farm on Lead Mine Road in Raleigh, Josef advising son Joe to "let the saw do the work."

In the U.S., Kiesenhofer craved symmetry - "as straight as Germany," not "as crooked as England."

Kiesenhofer meticulously crafted every dovetail toolbox, shelf or desk by hand. Every egg the Kiesenhofers delivered sat in its package thin end down. If you looked from one end of a line of their fenceposts, they sat so straight you could see just one.

The former soldier hated waste. He fixed old cars, for himself and his grandkids, rather than buy new.

While running a maintenance company, Josef brought home a wad of tangled jewelry he'd rescued from the trash bin at JCPenney. He and Heidi spent days untangling it.

Grandchildren Heidi, Josef and Erika often gave Kiesenhofer handkerchiefs to replace the old, stained ones he carried. When their "Opa" died, they found boxes of them left unopened.

Kiesenhofer vowed during World War II to "never waste a morsel of food." He once drank sour milk to prove the point. And, on their last trip to Germany together, Heidi Kiesenhofer had to clean both plates at meals.

"He took care of us," she says. "He wasn't a big speech giver, but there was always a lesson about being thankful for what you have."

Kiesenhofer lived his final years - Gertraud died in 1995 after nearly 53 years of marriage - for Joe, three grandkids and three great-grandkids, gray-blue eyes still laughing.

While renewing his driver's license at age 90, he asked if he could do it for 10 years instead of five. "Why?" the clerk asked. "So I can drive myself to my own funeral," he replied.

Kiesenhofer, a former gymnast, also maintained his vise-like grip, surprising a doctor just days before his death.

"He was always there," Joe Kiesenhofer says. "Until the last couple of years, anytime I needed anything lifted, he helped me. He was as strong as an ox. He was like my best friend."

Josef Kiesenhofer lived another version of the immigrant story.

"He taught us and took care of us," his granddaughter says. "He should be his own category."