Robert Redford played him in movie
Real estate developer was modest World War II hero
by Len Lear

Mike Sabia in Berlin, 1945.

Chestnut Hill native Michael G. “Mickey” Sabia, who died May 18 of a heart attack in Chestnut Hill Hospital at the age of 88 surrounded by family members, was too modest to call himself a hero. When the 65th anniversary of D-Day arrives June 6, however, and the rest of us look around for someone to thank for the fact that we’re not all speaking German and marching in lockstep, we can all give thanks to Mike Sabia and his buddies.

Mike grew up in a house on the 8100 block of Germantown Avenue, across the street from what is now Frankie’s Barber Shop. Mike’s dad, Dominick, was in the brick business in a big way His company, D.M. Sabia & Company, was the biggest brick contractor on the East Coast.

One of six siblings, Mike attended Jenks Elementary School and Germantown High School. He had worked as a waiter at Valley Green Inn through high school and at Cooperman’s Drug Store, which was next to the Sedgwick Theater at 7137 Germantown Ave. In 1939 Mike and nine Chestnut Hill friends, all 16, went downtown and signed up in the U.S. Army, saying they were 18.

“A guy named Jimmy Porter from Wyndmoor got paid a $5 recruitment fee for each one of us,” Mike told me in his Whitemarsh home just before D-Day in 2004. (Mike and his wife, Ann Bolender Sabia, later moved into the Hill at Whitemarsh, a retirement community.)

“He was in the same class at Jenks as (well known Chestnut Hill jeweler and pianist) Milt Bugay. Jimmy wound up as a full colonel, and all the guys I signed up with became officers.”

After signing up for the National Guard, Mike went to Officers Training School and came out as a second lieutenant, later gaining a promotion to captain. Mike became a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, 307th Engineers, making more than 50 jumps during his three years in Europe during World War II. Many of his buddies were killed in the jumps behind enemy lines, but Sabia was only wounded once — “in the butt” in Holland. “I’m a very lucky guy,” he conceded.

Mike volunteered to be a paratrooper because they were paid $100 a month more than their non-airborne buddies.

“I would have jumped out of anything for $100 extra a month,” he said.

Sabia’s division was commanded by Major General James M. Gavin, who led the parachute assault of the 82nd Airborne Division during the Normandy invasion on June 5 and 6, 1944.

Sabia was involved in the assault of Sicily in July, 1943, the Italian campaign in the fall of 1943 (Anzio and Salerno); the largest airborne operation in history near Nijmegen, Holland, in the fall of 1944; the Battle of the Bulge the following winter, and the spring offensive of 1945, which ended when the German Army surrendered.

Despite all of the combat his division engaged in, the event etched most vividly into Mike’s mind was its liberation of the Woebbelin Concentration Camp in Germany in May, 1945. He and his buddies found tiers of dead bodies, stacked like logs in a wood pile so that they could be easily counted. (The Germans were systematic to the last, even in storing the dead.)

“The smell of all those dead bodies was the most horrible thing in the world,” Mike insisted. “Unless you were there, you cannot possibly imagine it. I have Jewish buddies that I have needled, telling them they cannot know what it was like. . . We bulldozed a huge hole in the middle of the street, and we made the townspeople come out, pick up all of the bodies and bury them. They said they knew nothing about the concentration camp.”

Mike and his buddies were charged with the job, among other things, of clearing minefields and blowing up bridges and roads. One of their battles in Holland, the Battle of Market Garden, in September, 1944, was made into a movie, A Bridge Too Far, starring Robert Redford.

“He played my part,” Mike said. “He said ‘Hail Mary’ in the movie, but I really said ‘Our Father.’ “We were shot at often. In Holland we once had 30,000 guys all jumping out of DC-3 planes at once on a Sunday morning.

“We were so low, we could see people coming out of church. I was quite nervous when we were about to jump, to say the least. Once I ate too many donuts, and when we were flying over the English Channel, I threw up.”

After occupying Berlin, a colonel told Mike and his pals to occupy all the sumptuous houses on a particular street.

“We knocked on a door and told the people to move to the basement because we were going to live in their house,” he said. “The woman of the house cooked for us — she had no choice … We also took over a yacht club, and I learned to sail in the North Sea.”

Living in relative luxury in Berlin was quite a dramatic change from the draconian conditions of deprivation Mike and his buddies were used to.

“In World War II I shaved with coffee,” Mike said, “because it was the only thing that was hot he said. In Holland we were stealing food from a warehouse, and the Germans were stealing food from the same warehouse … In war there is a lot of black humor. For instance, one day we saw what looked like a German soldier, so we shot him. When we got closer, we realized it was a German soldier who had already been killed. His body was propped up against a tree to make it look like he was resting. Other American soldiers did it as a practical joke.”

Sabia received a Purple Heart for the wound he received in Holland. He was also awarded a Bronze Star with two Oak Leaf Clusters for bravery and two Presidential Unit Citations. Many of the friendships Mike made in the Army, because they were forged in the cauldron of war, lasted a lifetime. Every year, since the end of the war, he and a group of friends held a reunion.

After the war, Mike bought a house on Abington Avenue in Chestnut Hill, where he lived for five years. He then moved to Boyer Street in Mt. Airy, where he lived for five more years. Then to Whitemarsh for (you guessed it) five years, followed by 16 years on Germantown Pike in Plymouth Meeting.

Forty years ago he built the Hathaway House, an apartment complex at Wissahickon and Chelten Avenues in Germantown, and his construction company built 300 homes in Reading. In the 1960s Mike also started one of the first tire-shredding operations in the country and Domino Salvage, a landfill and reclamation business.

In the late 70s, Mike purchased 75 wooded acres from the Houston Estate in Whitemarsh Township, just a few minutes from Germantown Pike. He sold the land off in lots, the smallest being two-and-a-half acres. Mike retained four acres, on which he and his wife, Ann, lived. He sold the lots for $100,000, and one year later they were worth $200,000. Today they are worth astronomical sums. In all, 18 houses were built on the lots over three years.

Mike and wife, Ann, an interior designer, artist and long-time volunteer with Women for Greater Philadelphia, were married for 43 years. (They had met at the Wissahickon Ski Club.) Their home in Whitemarsh had an indoor swimming pool that they kept at 82 degrees.

They also had an old Fairmount Park Guard House on the property, which Mike bought from a friend 30 years ago. For years Mike and Ann had sailboats and airplanes, which they used to fly to a house they owned in Fort Lauderdale and to other vacation sites. (They sold their last plane, a Cessna 310 which they flew out of Wings Field in Blue Bell, 10 years ago.)

Near their property were lots of fox, deer, raccoons and wild turkeys. When I visited them, three of the turkeys stayed around the house at all times. Mike and Ann also purchased baby pheasants from a farm in South Dakota, which they fed, raised and then turned loose.

“It’s a great hobby,” Mike said.

The Chestnut Hill native was a member of the 82nd Airborne Division Association, Veterans of Foreign Wars/Chestnut Hill Post 5205, Wissahickon Ski Club, Cedarbrook Country Club and Bricklayers Local No. 1 of Pennsylvania.

“All in all,” said Mike in 2004, “it’s been a great life. We have no complaints.”

According to Mike’s brother, Donald, “Mike was the ultimate grandfather, husband, father and brother and a true friend to anyone who knew him.”

Mike is survived by his wife; a brother, Donald; a sister, Betty Podalski;  sons Michael Jr., Warren and Andrew; a daughter, Gabriella; stepsons Peter and Timothy Humes; 12 grandchildren and two great-granddaughters.

Sabia’s first wife, Joan Robinson, pre-deceased him, as did a daughter, Christine Ely, and two brothers, William and John.

Memorial Mass was said for Sabia on May 22 at St. Philip Neri Church in Lafayette Hill. Interment will be private in the National Military Cemetery at Washington Crossing. Memorial contributions may be made to St. Philip Neri School, 437 Ridge Pike, Lafayette Hill, PA 19444.