TIME MACHINE

JUNE 17, 1989

A unique legacy ended when 94-year-old George Lenz, of Aiken, died this day at the Georgia War Veterans Home.

He was the final member of Augusta's Last Man's Club, a collection of World War I veterans who met each year to raise a toast to themselves and the comrades they'd lost over the previous year.

The first meeting of 123 members was held Christmas Eve 1929, and the tradition continued for almost six decades. As the years went by, the custom of lighting a candle for each departed member took too long, and the practice was shortened to lighting a single candle.

The club's final meeting was in October 1986 in the Richmond Academy Library, and Felton Davis, an architect living in Albany, Ga., was the only one to show up. Soon he would be dead, as well as two others, leaving Lenz, the last "Last Man."