Model historians

Recreating the biggest naval battles of World War II in Rockville Centre

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In a second-floor room of the Rockville Centre American Legion Hall, the American and Japanese navies still wage pitched battles to determine the outcome of World War II.

Though the ships are locked in never-ending combat, the scales are significantly smaller than they were in the 1940s. Specifically, they’re 700 times smaller.

The room is lined with tables. Each on is covered with a blue tablecloth the azure of the deep ocean. On top, flat-bottomed models are laid out the way fleets combed the seas decades ago.

Each table captures a different moment of history: the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Guadalcanal and more.

But the real centerpiece of the room is the only table without the blue cover. It’s littered with boxes, plastic, glue and paint: detritus of assembly splayed out to cover every square inch, leaving little room for the actual work. It’s at that circular table that two men devote hours to their craft.

At one of the seats sits George Wells, a 66-year-old Hewlett resident who has been building models like those on display for 41 years. In the other seat is Wells’s apprentice: 14-year-old Spencer Jurgielewicz, who is getting ready to start his freshman year at Oceanside High School in September.

The two work together to build 1:700 scale models (meaning the models are 700 times smaller than the actual ships) and recreate naval battles of World War II: the last time that huge ships clashed on the seas.

“From a very young age, I was into science and history type things,” Jurgielewicz said. “And one day I was in the supermarket and George approached. He told us to come down here, and we did. The moment I saw the models, I fell in love.”

Jurgielewicz has been helping Wells build models for about a year, learning from the experienced builder not only how to assemble the models, but the history behind the ships as well.

Wells has been imparting his encyclopedic knowledge of World War II naval history onto Jurgielewicz. The younger man can now recite fleet movements, recall the battle history of individual ships, name the captains of those ships and tell you how much further a 1,200-pound shell could fly than a 800-pound one.

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