Eugene F. Kwapich, a longtime pharmacist, World War II veteran, and lottery winner, died Thursday at the Elizabeth Scott Community in Maumee. He was 96.

Mr. Kwapich had long suffered from heart disease and dementia, said Violet Kwapich, his wife of 43 years.

“He was honest and intelligent,” she said. “He loved his country, and he loved his neighbors.”

Mr. Kwapich was born August 28, 1920, in Toledo to Frank Kwapich, who ran his own pharmacy, and Hedwig Kwapich, who helped her husband at the store. He was the first of five siblings.

From an early age, Mr. Kwapich was serious and diligent. He always preferred reading to sports.

“He would play like the other kids, but he was very studious,” Mrs. Kwapich said.

When he was old enough, he began helping out at his father’s pharmacy, where he swept the floors, worked the soda fountain, cleaned the windows, and took stock.

He graduated from Catholic High School in 1938. Mr. Kwapich wanted to become an airline pilot, but at his mother’s insistence, took up the family trade instead, enrolling at the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

After his college graduation, Mr. Kwapich joined the Navy to fight in World War II. He participated in the amphibious invasion of Sicily and later in the battles of Okinawa, Kwajalein, and Makin Island in the Pacific theater.

He barely survived a kamikaze attack by a Japanese pilot while serving on the USS Alcyone. Mr. Kwapich’s son, Steve Kwapich, remembers his father describing the incident.

“Every gun in the ship was firing at this thing,” the younger Mr. Kwapich said. “It narrowly missed their ship and crashed into the ocean just on the other side of them.”

Upon returning home, Mr. Kwapich opened his own pharmacy — Kwapich Pharmacy at the intersection of Detroit and Belmont avenues — just as his father had.

More than 30 years after his mother quashed his plans to become an airline pilot, Mr. Kwapich revisited his dreams of flight at a friend’s suggestion. After more than two years of part-time training, he earned his pilot’s license.

“He always wanted to do it,” Mrs. Kwapich said. “This was something in his mind that he could do, and he was going to do.”

After working nearly 50 years as a pharmacist, Mr. Kwapich won $8 million in the lottery. He retired that day.

Having little taste for luxury, Mr. Kwapich spent most of his winnings financing his children’s educations and buying them cars. 

He and Mrs. Kwapich also spent more time vacationing.

“It didn’t change him any,” the younger Mr. Kwapich said.

Mr. Kwapich is preceded in death by his first wife, Rose Elaine Kwapich, who died in the fall of 1971.

Surviving are his wife, Violet; sons, Steve Kwapich and Fred Schinke; daughter, Pamela Conti; sister, Joanne Duncan; five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Mr. Kwapich’s family will receive visitors on Tuesday from 2-8 p.m. at Urbanski Funeral Home, 5055 Secor Road. Visitation will continue at Little Flower Catholic Church on Wednesday from 10 a.m. until the funeral service begins there at 11 a.m.

The family suggests memorial donations to Little Flower Catholic Church, the Elizabeth Scott Community Activity Department, or Hospice of Northwest Ohio.

Contact Jacob Stern at jstern@theblade.com or 419-724-6050.

First Published July 24, 2017, 4:00 a.m.