He went from mowing FDR’s lawn to the Battle of the Bulge

He went from mowing FDR’s lawn to the Battle of the Bulge

Ralph J. Osterhoudt, now 96, was 15 when World War II began. His family’s Hudson Valley, New York, farm was just a bicycle ride north of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hyde Park estate, where Osterhoudt worked summers. Though a schoolboy, he stepped up to serve, first as a volunteer in the Ground Observer Corps, organized to alert military authorities should enemy aircraft penetrate American skies. Later — as a U.S. Army replacement rushed to…