IRA MALEK • KOREAN WAR
Ira Malek, 96
Rockport, MA
Born: 2/1/1929
Died: 9/22/2025
Born/Raised: Brooklyn, NY
Service: US Airforce
Rank: 1st Lieutenant
Dates of Service: 1952-1954, NY National Guard ret. 1966
Ira Malek was born nine months before the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression washed across the country. His father, Morris Malek was a bank vice president at the Rugby National Bank in Brooklyn, NY at the time and his mother Tillie worked at the Department of Buildings in the finance department. He had two brothers, Albert and Matthew, and two sisters, Shirley and Florence. He ended up growing up poor as his father went from being an executive to delivering bread during the Depression.
Ira ultimately graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1946. In 1952, fresh from receiving a degree in mathematics from City College of New York (the Harvard of the Proletariat), Ira did as his brother Albert had done before him, enlisted. He was immediately dubbed an Airman 3d class and sent to Officers Training School at Sampson Air Force Base in Seneca, NY.
Following his training in NY, he was shipped down to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for more training that would carry on until September 1953 and an eventual rise to 1st Lieutenant, however all the training, commitment, time and energy it took to become an officer in the US Air Force ultimately amounted to a hill of beans for Ira Malek and his military career. Shortly after finishing his training, the military initiated a policy of “riffing” (reduction in force) officers owing to the ebbing conflict in Korea.
They sent the newly minted Air Force officer packing, truncating his four-year stint into two and discharging him as a 1st Lieutenant, all without ever having left the continental United States. All wasn’t completely wasted however as Ira became a member of the NY Air National Guard with the Fighter Intercept Squadron and served until 1966.
Back in New York, Ira secured a job as a hospital rep for the Ayerst Laboratories of Pfizer Corporation at Cornell Medical Center. On the Labor Day weekend in 1955, Ira and a friend were at Brighton Beach and Ira latched eyes on Norma. He escorted her home and arranged a second date. They married in January 1956 and remained so for 51 years until her death in 2008. They have three children, Linda Petrino, Jody Grunfeld and Robert Malek, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
In 1963 Ira began the unusual hobby of restoring player pianos. By 1969 he retired from Pfizer and turned his passion into a full-time business. He closed the business in 2000 and in February 2024 moved to Rockport to be near his daughter Linda, a retired GHS teacher.