Las Vegan remembered for WWII service, Jewish federation support

Jon Countess was a kid poking around in the attic of his parents’ Long Island home when he first learned his father was a real hero, someone much larger than those 1950s cowboys he watched shooting up bad guys on TV.

“I came across his Army footlocker, where his letters were stored,” the 71-year-old remembered. “I think it was the first letter I read, where he got his Silver Star for shooting a bunch of Germans.

“I was used to seeing the bad guys being shot on TV, but this was like, ‘whoa.’ ”

Army private Jerome Countess also was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart for his World War II service, first with the First Infantry Division, known as The Big Red One, in North Africa and in Sicily, and later with the Headquarters II Corps in Northern Italy. Like so many WWII veterans, the longtime director of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas rarely talked of his wartime exploits.

Only when Jon Countess was editing his father’s book, “Letters from the Battlefield in Love and War: Memoirs of a WWII Soldier,” published in 2005, did the elder Countess open up.

He was a runner in the Battle of Troina, delivering messages to bases as Gen. George S. Patton Jr. led Allied forces against Germans dug into the hilly terrain of central Sicily in late summer 1943.

“When you’re a runner, you’re a target,” his son said during a March 31 interview. “He was being shot at while running back and forth on this hilly terrain.

“And he told me, ‘Sometimes I dream about that, and I’m amazed I lived through it.’ ”

The elder Countess died March 18 at University Medical Center after a fall in his Summerlin home. He was 99.

A legacy beyond the battlefield

Heroic soldier is just one image Jerry Countess left with family and friends. For the last 45 years, Las Vegas was his home, and Countess’ friends said he influenced hundreds as director of the city’s Jewish Federation. He expanded the organization to include young leadership and made it more relevant as the city also flourished.

“When he came to Las Vegas in 1975, there were very few things here for the Jewish community,” said Dr. Neville Pokroy, a nephrologist and longtime Countess family friend. “So Jerry took it upon himself to find ways to keep the Jewish heritage alive in the community.”

The elder Countess recruited Pokroy, a Las Vegas newcomer at the time, over lunch at Papa Gar’s, a restaurant then popular with many of the city’s most influential residents. Pokroy became part of the federation’s newly formed young leadership committee, the Young Leadership Chavura.

“He knew youth was going to be the future of the federation, and he wanted young people, many of whom were highly trained academically, to be involved,” said Pokroy, who remains a federation member.

Before moving to Las Vegas, Countess worked with the United Jewish Appeal in New York City, where he was responsible for fundraising in nearly 30 New Jersey communities. After the war, he married his sweetheart, Rachel, and moved from his native Brooklyn to Levittown, on Long Island.

Storyteller and friend

He also built and sold three small businesses — an employment agency, a domestic cleaning service and another that offered household tasks, according to his family.

“Everybody liked my father,” said Jon Countess, a financial planner who has lived in Hilo, Hawaii, since 1985. “When he’d come to visit us, my friends couldn’t wait to come over, have a martini with him and shoot the breeze.”

Countess was a good storyteller and a terrific writer, Pokroy said. He called his friend’s war memoir a combination love story – some of the book is letters to future wife Rachel — and documentary “on what it was like to be in the trenches during one of the most terrible times in history.”

Jon Countess said his dad was his best friend, a father who planned trips sledding in the snow of upstate New York and who learned to sail so they could explore Long Island’s Atlantic waters. For the last few years, the two talked every day on the phone. And nearly right until the end, the elder Countess — a golfer later in life, handball player as a young man, a gardener and writer — stayed busy.

“Two days before he died, he was on his hands and knees planting flowers in his backyard,” said Jon Countess, who was unable to attend his father’s funeral because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to his son, Jerome Countess is survived by a daughter, Jane Seda of Las Vegas, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a son, Michael, and his wife, Rachel.

A funeral service took place March 23 at King David Memorial Chapel followed by burial at Palm Valley View Cemetery.