Navy veteran, author, and friend ‘Tory’ Failmezger dies at 74

Victor “Tory” Failmezger, a career veteran in the U.S. Navy who, in retirement, turned to research and writing about World War II in Europe, died recently following complications from heart failure. He was 74.

Tory, as he preferred to be called, earned a degree of fame in both callings and also was known for his Middletown residence, the building of which he supervised the re-creation of Thomas Jefferson’s private home, Poplar Forest.

Born in New Jersey, Tory is survived by his wife of 50 years, Patricia A. Grant, their son, Christian, daughter Victoria Matthews, two grandsons, and a sister, Stephanie Partilla of Huntington, Long Island. His brother, Robin Gregory, died in 2017.

Tory and Patricia met in Italy during twin service careers, she as a U.S. Navy nurse, he, heading for a career in naval intelligence during which, and after, satisfied a lifelong infatuation with the European continent.

A friend well remembered, Victor ‘Tory’ Failmezger

He graduated first from Southern Methodist University in 1969, then later, while based in Italy, earned a Master’s Degree in International Relations from Boston University’s Naples (Italy) campus.

While spending a good part of his naval career in Europe, Tory spent his initial years home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan, from which he participated in the emergency evacuation of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. At that point, as an air intelligence officer, he became an aide to the U.S. Director of Naval Intelligence, followed by a stint as Assistant Naval Attaché in Rome.

This was described in his self-written, lengthy obituary, read aloud by Victoria at a private ceremony in the Middletown house, as Patricia and his favorite assignment in a 22-year military career.

Tory reached the rank of commander before retirement and received eight personal decorations, including four meritorious service medals. His final Navy assignment was at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. where he directed a team evaluating bomb damage inflicted during Operation Desert Storm in the Iraq war.

Private life post-Navy included working with NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy while traveling widely in Europe, where he was the featured speaker at several international conferences.

The cover of Failmezger’s final published book, on the Nazi occupation of Rome during the Axis battle to maintain control of Italy as the tide turned in World War II.

Locally, Tory served four years on the Warren County Planning Commission, but in more recent years he and Patricia traveled Europe extensively while he researched materials for the last two of his six published books. The first of that final duo, published by the prestigious Osprey Publications of Oxford, UK, was titled “American Knights”. It is the story of the legendary World War II 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion and featured his uncle, Army Lt. Tommy Welch, whose battalion famously fought its way from the south of Italy to the gates of Rome.

His second, even more, comprehensive history of World War II in Europe was published just a few short months before his passing. It concentrated in-depth on the Nazi occupation of Rome, 1943-44. In the course of writing these two books, the Failmezgers regularly traveled to Europe to complete deep research activities, occasionally taking the rest of the family with them.

(Malcolm Barr Sr., our contributing writer who spent almost a decade as a military writer during the Vietnam War for The Associated Press, was one of a number of Failmezger’s friends with differing specialties involved in producing his last two books. Barr has copies, signed by Tory, in his bookshelf, which he lists among his “proud possessions.”)