CROSBY Last week, John Benter was hard at work at Crosby Tire and Body Shop, the business he started with a partner after he returned home from World War II.

Benter, who will turn 90 in December, sold the business to his son, Neil, years ago, but he still can be found from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday at the body shop, repairing dents, fixing radiators and sometimes also going out on wrecker calls.

“I still enjoy working,” said Benter.

He may move a little more stiffly than he used to, but is still in good health.

He said new technology has changed the business in ways he couldn’t have imagined back in the 1940s.

While in years past, a large part of the business was jump-starting cars that refused to start, now that doesn’t happen. Newer cars just about always start in cold weather, even if they’ve been parked in the frigid North Dakota temperatures for three days.

If a car breaks down, it is apt to be something electronic, which often means the car has to hauled to an automobile dealership in a larger town such as Minot. Benter said the business also spends a lot of time taking cars to nearby Estevan, Sask.

Most of the work that is done at the shop is auto body work or glass repair. They also plow snow in the winter.

Benter started the shop after World War II with a friend, Egil Lokken, whom he was in partnership with for 19 years. At that point, Benter bought his partner out and relocated to a bigger building that permitted him to expand his business. Later, in 1982, he went into partnership with his son, Neil. They remained partners until Neil bought the business in 1996. Now Benter works there for his son.

Benter said he has also noticed changes with the ongoing oil boom in northwest North Dakota. He thinks Divide County has people living there from all 50 states.

Benter also keeps himself busy with another pet hobby, collecting vintage military vehicles and other memorabilia. The World War II vet has a warehouse filled with treasures that he shows off every year during the annual county threshing show and local parades.

People come from far and wide to see one of his treasures, a 1945 6 X 6 that was the predominant truck used to build the Alaskan Highway. In 1996, Benter and his wife, Marian, took the Studebaker to Alaska to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the highway and camped out in it.

“I have the best wife,” said Benter of his wife of nearly 66 years. His own parents separated when he was young, but he and his wife raised a large family with close ties. They were blessed with five children, one of whom has passed away, and 13 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren.

The collectibles in the warehouse, located about a block from the body shop, also include lots of memories for Benter, who fought in the South Pacific and was decommissioned as a Army technical sergeant.

Benter had just graduated from high school when he went with a friend to the county courthouse to enlist in the Army. The farewells were not emotional. Benter said his friend went to tell his mother he had enlisted and his mother told him to make sure to do one more farm chore before he got on the train. Benter himself enlisted without letting his parents know. By chance, the train carrying the newly enlisted soldiers made its way through Montana and Benter mentioned that he would like to stop and have a chance to tell his mother he was going into the Army. A brief stop was arranged and Benter was able to meet briefly with his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in a few years.

Benter and the friend he enlisted with ended up serving in different theaters of the war, but both made it back home alive.

Benter remembers “crying like a baby” for hours after his ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge after the war. “It was like being born again,” said Benter.

After the war, he spent a few months working with his father in a logging camp. He liked the work and the quiet, but he but soon found himself missing the company of young men his own age. He returned to Crosby to visit some of the friends he had gone to school with and ended up staying and opening the auto body business with Lokken.

One of the photos on display in “Benter’s Collectibles” shows a young Benter, sitting on a Jeep with some of his comrades in arms in the war.

“We were young, just out of high school,” said Benter of his good friends. “When you have a friend in the military, you’re super friends,” he said. There was little the band of brothers wouldn’t have done for each other.

Benter stayed in touch with seven of the men he served with after the war. “One of them I was friends with for 48 years,’ said Benter, until his friend passed away.

Now that Benter is the only one left of his comrades, he worries a bit that people are losing interest in the history of World War II. He hasn’t had much luck persuading young people to help him maintain the antique military vehicles in his warehouse. It takes several hours to remove the vehicles from the warehouse for a threshing show parade and is quite a logistical operation when he needs to return them to the building and park them in the right order, all without running into one of the other vehicles. He thinks the accomplishments of the World War II generation should not be forgotten.

Benter said he has had a good life and plans to continue enjoying work and family in his hometown of Crosby.