‘All he had was a pencil.’ Fresno World War II veteran went from orphan to business owner
If you asked Carlos Torres what his wartime experiences were like, he would never tell you he was a hero.
“He said he was scared. He saw people get shot,” his son Danny Torres said.
At 19, Torres enlisted in his first of two stints in the Army. He was deployed during World War II, fought in the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and earlier that year in June he fought in D-Day, when the Allies invaded Western Europe.
“A lot of guys died, but he didn’t die,” Danny Torres, 64, said recently at Torres’ Lowell Neighborhood home.
Indeed, Torres lived to be 94 years old. He died Feb. 27 during a visit to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in central Fresno, where he suffered a heart attack.
His family says he lived a long and successful life, which was built out of nearly nothing, since he grew up an orphan. His mother died when he was very young and his father abandoned him and his brother when they were young.
A helper and a provider
In the 1950s, Torres started his own accounting and real-estate business after he was discharged from the Army as a financial clerk. In an earlier enlistment, he had served as a radio operator and rifleman.
He had only gotten through two-and-a-half years of college but learned enough to launch the business. What started in a Chinatown office in the late ’50s, Tower Accounting soon moved into Torres’ home on San Pablo and McKenzie avenues.
“All he had was a pencil,” Danny Torres said. “He didn’t have a rich family, he didn’t have a rich dad, he didn’t have (anything). ... Then he just went around to people and he’d pick up accounts.”
Danny Torres said his father mostly worked with immigrants who were starting new businesses, like stores, restaurants or taverns. He helped translate documents and set up business accounts.
Throughout his life, Torres was a helper and a provider, according to his family.
His daughter Dolores Torres, 65, remembers when the family didn’t have enough to pay tuition for her final year at Fresno State.
“I was really sad,” Dolores Torres said. “And then he goes, ‘Dolores come here.’ And he said, ‘Put out your hand,’ and he gave me the money.
“I said, ‘Oh, thank you so much,’ and I was able to finish.”
Torres also put his oldest daughter Barbara through law school.
Danya Torres, Torres’ granddaughter, knows her aunt’s feeling. She lived rent-free at Torres’ home while she studied nursing at Fresno State.
“He was a provider,” said Danya Torres, now a nurse at the VA hospital. “He grew up very poor, but he went through the military (and) survived World War II.”
His success was evident by the family’s ability to afford a comfortable living, Dolores Torres said. Torres and his wife, who died a month before him, took several trips abroad. Torres came to own four homes in Fresno.
“My mother got the latest car, she was always dressed with the latest clothes. He had enough,” Dolores Torres said.
His own comfort was passed on to his accounting and real estate customers. Danny Torres said his father never charged too much for his services. People would come from out of town to do business with him at affordable prices.
Outgoing and ‘a joker’
Danny Torres now runs the business. And a week before his death, Torres was still helping out, or “fooling around,” as his son put it. Torres had his own desk in his room where he would add up invoices for stores.
“Til the last end, he fed the dogs, he did the bookkeeping,” Danny Torres said.
When he wasn’t working, Torres spent his time watching golf, which he used to play as a member of the Mexican American Golf Association; he was also part of the Mexican American Political Association and the Sister Cities International of Fresno group.
One of his two dogs, Precious, was never far away. Dolores Torres said her father’s affection for animals was incomparable. His children said the animals, like the friends who were often over, helped fill his need for companionship, what he lacked when he was young.
“He was an outgoing person,” Danny Torres said. “We weren’t enough for him. He wanted more people (around him).”
He was surrounded by people one year when a Fresno Urban Neighborhood Development Corporation project led to a restoration of his home, which he’d previously tried to patch up with linoleum and carpet to keep it looking nice. But Danya Torres said it needed greater repair.
The project completely transformed the inside and outside of the home. A local TV crew came to witness the work. And buses of college students came to help. When it was finished, the family organized a large picnic for all the helpers. Former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin even made it out.
Torres’ flirtatiousness came out then, his children said, when he called the mayor pretty. “He was a joker,” Danny Torres said.
Letting go
In his final days, he’d often he’d walk through the neighborhood to his second wife’s family, with whom he had an emotional connection still. They’d give him his diabetes medication. He’d also long had a heart murmur but it had never amounted to a severe situation.
To live to 94, his family thought, was impressive. And to have done so with some health complications was even more marvelous.
“They never cut off his toes, they never cut off his feet, they never cut off (anything),” Danny Torres said of his veteran father’s diabetes condition. “He was fine. He was waking around. Then he had the heart attack and he was gone.”
The family had already lived through seeing their mother Mary tied to tubes on a hospital bed before she eventually died Jan. 11 of stomach cancer. They didn’t want to see that happen again with their father, even though the VA hospital tried everything they could to save his life.
So on the recent Wednesday when Torres suffered a heart attack at the hospital, hours after Precious had been fed and after he’d ate one of his favorite meals — a burger from McDonald’s — Danny Torres said the family was OK with just letting him go.
Though he’d never say he was a hero, an honorary procession at the VA hospital, given at the time of a veteran’s death, treated him as such.
As a salute, a large American flag was draped over his hospital bed after he took his final breathe. He was laid to rest a week later at St. Peter’s Cemetery.
This story was originally published March 9, 2019 at 2:32 PM.
