WWII dog tags found on beach in 1966 returned to family
ALBANY— It took 50 years for a Long Island woman to finally complete her quest to return a World War II veteran’s lost dog tags she found on a New York City beach.
Laurie Lubin, of Bellmore, began her search by poring over phone books in the 1960s and continued into the internet era. She recently hit pay dirt when she learned that one of the veteran’s daughters lives just a few miles away in Queens.
Lubin’s quest to find Brooklyn native Irving Isaacs began in the summer of ’66 when she was about to turn 14. One day at Rockaway Beach in Queens, she spotted something shiny in the sand: a pair of dog tags on a metal chain, along with a small metal mezuzah, a religious pendant some Jewish servicemen attached to their tags. She knew immediately what the items were because her father still had his own mezuzah-accessorized dog tags from serving in the Army during WWII.