Daverio, John

John Daverio

Sharon, PA

Enchanted with history

John Daverio has been fascinated with history since he was a kid. He can tell you how many words there are in the Treaty of Versailles, how many Russians were killed during World War II, how many tons of bombs were dropped on Japan after the two atomic bombs, and why the sun never set on the British Empire.

His interest in history was rooted in his own family and in his neighborhood.

“When I was in third grade in what is now the Musser School,” John said, “the teacher one day said, ‘We all have our own language. Here we have English, in Germany they have German, and so on. They all have just one language.’ I got up and I said, ‘In Switzerland they have three languages – Italian, German, and French.’ She said, ‘Now John, where did you ever hear that? I said, ‘From my father and mother.’”

John’s father, Joe Daverio, learned construction with marble, granite, and concrete in his home town of Como, Italy. He worked in Switzerland and Germany before coming to the United States. His brother Sam worked in Switzerland and France.

“My mother’s three sisters settled in France. They wanted to come here, but the husbands said the United States was too violent. So they stayed there and lived through two world wars.”

When Joe Daverio came here in 1905, he worked with the Vasconi brothers, who came from the same part of Italy and worked in the same trade. Then around 1911, he decided to start his own business.

“He did very well, because the country was young and growing, and there was lots of construction. He was a member of the union for 37 years before he passed away in 1942.”

John was born in 1917, seven years after his sister Caroline and seven years before his brother Joe. John got a practical education in geopolitics from his neighborhood in Sharon, which included families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. There were German, Hungarian, Schwabian, Irish, Slovak, and Russian families. Each of them reflected the nations they came from, and mirrored the relationships among them.

After high school, John attended business school in Sharon for a year.

John working on the Crippled Children’s Center in Hermitage, PA, October 1957

“Then some construction work started up. So my dad said it might be better for me to get my apprenticeship card. When I started I was the youngest bricklayer there. Before I retired I got my 50-year gold membership card with the Bricklayers, Masons, and Plasterers Union of Sharon. My brother Joe and Uncle Sam also got gold cards.”

Working hard didn’t dull John’s interest in learning. Nor did his military service during World War II. Late in 1944 he arrived at Tinian Island, the B-29 base from which the United States launched countless aerial assaults on Japan – including the only two nuclear attacks in history. The B-29s flew countless bombing sorties against Japan before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few Americans know much about those earlier missions.

“This has never been publicized too much,” John said. “We used 80% napalm. Every bomb load carried almost eight tons of fire and two five hundred pound TNT bombs to spread the fire. We bombed at least 160 cities.”

The Air Force used the B-29s to mine the waters around Japan which effectively shut down shipping between the coast of Asia and Japan.

“We had what they called Torpex bombs. They were magnetic and acoustic mines. We dropped them from Korea all the way down between Japan and the mainland of Asia. The Japanese were not getting any more gas and oil. We knew that the war could not last much longer than the month of July.”

But the Japanese refused to surrender, so on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bombs.

“But the war did not end with those bombs,” John stressed. “We didn’t hear from the Japanese on the 10th, on the 11th, on the 12th. On the 13th we got orders to load up every B-29 in the Mariana Islands – 850 of them. And each one of those carried maximum weight, eight tons of TNT bombs. On the 14th, after that bombing, they finally surrendered.”

Margaret Sparano Daverio

When John and his brother Joe came back from the war, they resumed their father’s bricklaying business. John remained unmarried until he was 36.

“I had known Margaret Sparano at a distance when we were teenagers because my parents knew her parents. She was very brilliant and attractive. After I came home from the army I wanted to ask her for a date, but I heard she was going with a doctor in Akron. I said oh, well, that leaves a bricklayer out. Then some relation said, ‘No, I don’t think she’s going with anyone.’ So I asked her out and she said okay.”

John and Margaret dated for two years before they got married on November 24, 1953.

“I just liked everything about her,” he said. “She was just my type. She wanted to be a school teacher but her parents didn’t have money to send her to college. But she was well-read and educated herself. She played the piano. She had the same piano teacher as my sister Caroline.”

Johnny four days old

Margaret was a buyer for four departments at Sharon Store. She stayed with the store when it became May’s and then Kauffman’s.

The marriage of John and Margaret turned out to be exceptionally fortunate, a rare combination that provided the genetics and environment to produce a truly exceptional son. Born in 1954, their only child John Joseph Daverio, or Johnny Joe as they called him, started speaking when he was seven months old. He began teaching himself German at the age of six, shortly before he started reading Shakespeare.

John, age 11, playing on the Sharon Senior High stage, January 1966

Johnny took up the violin when he was seven, and gave his first performance with the Youngstown Symphony when he was 13 years old. He advanced rapidly beyond the abilities of local teachers. Mr. Rosenberg, his teacher at YSU, sent a tape to Carnegie Hall when they were conducting a talent search for the National Youth Symphony. John was a finalist and was awarded a four-year scholarship at Tanglewood with the Bernstein New Artists. He played in a televised broadcast at Carnegie Hall when he was 14. He was offered university scholarships to many great universities, including a National Merit Scholarship and a National Council of Teachers Award in English. He accepted one to Boston University, graduating Summa Cum Laude.

John Joseph Daverio after receiving his PhD on May 15, 1983

While he could have pursued a performance career, John chose to be a teacher. He spent his entire career at Boston University, eventually becoming head of the Musicology Department. He became world renowned for his scholarly publications as well as his performance excellence. He lectured at various universities in the United States and Europe, and could speak Italian, French, German, and Greek, and was learning Russian. He gave pre-concert lectures for the Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. Two of his colleagues were Russian violinists. They were making preparations for him to perform in Leningrad.

John was known not just for his intelligence and talent, but also for his personality and his love of children. According to a Boston Globe article, “His first stop at his friends’ homes was always the floor, where he would instantly begin playing with whatever game or toy was at hand.”

John with his mother in Boston, 1990

His students praised him for the quality of his preparation, knowledge, and sense of humor. Students came from far away to learn from him. One blind student came from Greece specifically to study music history from him.

John often returned to Sharon to visit his parents. His last visit was in March, 2003.

“He was here visiting his mother in the hospital. He left here early in the morning of March 16. He called at 3:30 that afternoon and said he got to Boston and everything was okay, and said he would be seeing us in three weeks because he was going to give a lecture at Pitt. But that never happened.”

Security cameras at the Boston University Fine Arts building recorded John Joseph leaving the building about 9:30 that evening. Then he simply vanished. A month later his body was found in the Charles River. The cause of death was determined to be drowning, but the case was never solved.

Both John and Margaret had to battle depression. “I lost almost 40 pounds, and Margaret lost a lot of weight, too.”

Margaret passed away in February, 2006. He misses not only her, but also his brother Joe and sister Caroline. Joe had worked with him throughout his career. Caroline was a teacher in the Sharon Schools, Penn State Shenango, and Edinboro University.

Despite these losses, John has gradually recovered his ability to laugh and to share his knowledge of history with others. He has lectured about World War II at Kennedy Catholic High School, and has been invited to speak there again this September.

“I was very pleased with the kids there,” John said. “They were very attentive and asked some very good questions.”

And he continues to read and to learn. He can tell you that the treaty of Versailles contained 80,000 words, that 28 million Russians were killed during World War II, and that our B-29s dropped nearly 7,000 tons of bombs on Japan on August 14, 1945 – five days after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He might also tell you that the sun never set on the British Empire because God didn’t trust them in the dark. So in spite of losing what no one should ever lose, he has kept his mind and his sense of humor.

David Garth Finnegan

Finnegan, David

Sharon, PA

U.S. Army, Vietnam

Dong Ap Bia is a mountain in Thua Thien Province, Vietnam, west south west of Hue, within range of North Vietnamese Army mortars positioned across the border in Laos. In military terminology, it was known as Hill 937, since it was 937 meters high. But it is best known as Hamburger Hill, largely due to a 1987 movie of that name.

The movie focuses on the actions of the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry, of the 101st Airborne Division as it assaulted the hill, which was heavily defended by the North Vietnamese Army from interconnected trenchworks and bunkers. But that battalion was just one of three American army battalions and two battalions of the South Vietnamese Army to attack it, reinforced by an awesome accumulation of U.S. air power and artillery. One of the American units was the 101st Airborne’s 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry.

David Garth Finnegan was a sergeant in that battalion’s A Company.

The attack on Hill 937 developed during an attempt to clear the A Shau Valley of North Vietnamese elements. The valley was a vital link in the NVA’s resupply routes for men and materiel into the South. Before the battalions operation began, there was little reliable intelligence about the strengths and dispositions of the NVA. What they found on Hill 937 was a NVA elements solidly emplaced in an interconnected series of bunkers and entrenchments.

The American commanders thought at first that it was defended by a company-sized force. When the 3/187th Infantry ‘s assaults from the south were repulsed time and time again, the 1/506th was sent to attack from the north.

The American and South Vietnamese forces not only had to deal with the enemy, but also with the terrain and the weather. The steep hillsides turned to mud, making progress nearly impossible. It ended up taking ten days to reach the summit, in spite of 272 attack sorties by the Air Force, more than a million pounds of bombs, and 152,000 pounds of napalm. Up there they found more than 630 dead soldiers from two NVA battalions.

Sgt. Finnegan was killed on May 18, 1969, two days before the American forces reached the summit – which was also barely a month before the American forces abandoned the hill and two months before the NVA reoccupied their fortifications there.

Why is a question which must often remain unanswered.

On the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Panel W24 Line 40

Dexter Zippay

Sharon, PA

When he was a kid, Dexter Zippay loved airplanes and wanted to learn to fly. While still in high school, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Navy to become a naval aviator. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pass the eye test. His next choice was to become a U.S. Marine. He enlisted shortly after his 17th birthday and went on active duty on October 21, 1946.

He was trained as a forward observer for naval gunfire. His mission would have been to swim from ship to shore, set up an observation post, then call back coordinates to the ship’s gunfire control center. The job was the forerunner of the Navy SEALs. Dex didn’t get to perform that mission because the war had ended before he enlisted.

Nevertheless, after completing training, Dex found himself heading west over the Pacific while most U.S. troops were sailing east toward their homes in the United States. There were other forces going west across the Pacific to occupy Japan, but Dex was not among them. He was headed for China.

At the time of Japan’s surrender, the Marine Corps’ III Amphibious Corps (IIIAC) had been on Guam training for the invasion of Japan. That invasion wasn’t necessary because of the Japanese surrender, but the Marines of the IIIAC were not sent home. Instead, they were sent to north China to accept the surrender of the Japanese troops there and to assist with the process of getting Japanese civilians and military personnel back to Japan.

This was no simple assignment. It involved dealing with the repatriation of more than 650,000 Japanese in the midst of the battles between the Chinese Nationalists of Chaing Kai-shek and the Communists of Mao Tse-tung. The Marines were also called upon to protect trains transporting food and coal to the cities in the area.

The Marines were supposed to avoid engaging either the Nationalists nor the Chinese in combat, but that wasn’t always possible. Dex told his wife, Florine, about one incident he experienced personally. He had built a radio station up in the mountains, and was operating it with one other Marine. One of them would be inside the hut either resting or operating the station while the other kept guard outside with one machine gun. While Dex was inside, he heard the machine gun start firing. Dex went out to see waves of Chinese soldiers attacking the place. Florine doesn’t know how Dex and his friend survived the attack.

Another time some of his friends decided to go hunting, but Dex didn’t go with them. One of the hunting party was killed by the Chinese. Dex was assigned to the detail that went to recover the body. He told Florine that it was a scary experience because they were surrounded by many armed Chinese wearing bandoliers full of ammunition.

“He said he felt like he was in Terry and the Pirates,” Florine said.

Because they were up in the mountains with limited transportation, Dex learned how to ski.

Dex’s commanding officer had the opportunity to recommend one soldier for Officer Candidate School. He selected Dex.

“Dex would have had to sign up for four more years,” Florine said, “but we wanted to get married. He wrote me a letter saying that the Marine Corps would pay my way to join him in China. I said ‘Sure,’ but my father said, ‘Oh no!’ I was too young. He would have had to sign papers for me to go, but he wouldn’t. So Dexter told his commanding officer that he couldn’t accept the offer. His CO got very angry about it.”

Dex’s mother developed some serious health problems, so he was brought back from China. Shortly after he came back, he married his childhood sweetheart, Florine Kornreich. They lived in Quantico, Virginia, until he completed his service on October 20, 1949.

Dex passed away on May 14, 2015. He and Florine had been married for 66 years. On Veterans Day, November 11, 2015, his cremated remains were interred in the Avenue of 444 Flags at America’s Cemetery, Hermitage, PA.

Douglas Kennedy Dayton

Dayton, Douglas

Doug Dayton

Sharon, PA

U.S. Army. Vietnam

Fr. Douglas Dayton served in the Episcopal Ministry for 20 years – three years as Assistant Rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Sharon, and seventeen as Rector. That’s quite a career, especially considering the fact that he didn’t start studying for the priesthood until he was 43 years old, after completing a twenty-year career in the United States Air Force.

“People who know how much I love the ministry would say to me, ‘I bet you wish that you had gone into the seminary right out of college,” Fr. Dayton says. “But I tell them that those 20 years in the military, particularly my tour in Vietnam, helped me to be a much better priest and pastor.”

After graduating from high school in 1960, he studied at Buffalo State Teachers College, then went on to get a Master of Science in Secondary Education from Fredonia State Teachers College.

That career path took a little twist because of the Vietnam War.

“I got on board with the Air Force’s Officer Training Program,” he said. “I became a 90-Day-Wonder at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.”

His Air Force Specialty was, appropriately, Education and Training. After assignments at Lackland and Hamilton Air Force Bases, he was sent to Nha Trang Airbase in Vietnam as education and training adviser to the Vietnamese Air Force’s 2nd Air Division.

“When I got there, the U.S. 7th Air Force personnel were running the airbase. Our job was to train the Vietnamese to be able to run the airbase by themselves. I was involved in a variety of training programs.”

U.S. advisers worked one-on-one with a Vietnamese counterpart. To be successful, the two had to develop a trusting, friendly relationship.

“My counterpart invited me to his home for dinner once,” Fr. Dayton said. “I tried to eat what I thought I could handle, but he made sure they served some that I could.”

After returning from Vietnam, Major Dayton taught four years at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, then served at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Before retiring as a Colonel, he served as Professor of Aerospace Studies for the Air Force ROTC Detachment at Grove City College.

And that left him ready for his career as a pastor and priest.

Fr. Dayton and his wife Kathleen have two adult children, Rachael and Aaron, and four grandchildren: Darius, Lucia, Parker, and Zoe.

Video interview of Major Dayton

Dr. Benjamin Wood

Sharon, PA

U.S. Army – World War II

Dr. Benjamin Wood came from a family of physicians, and continued the tradition by producing his own family of physicians – with a twist. All five of his sons became physicians; he and four of them served as physicians in the United States Armed Forces.

For the senior Dr. Wood, it wasn’t a matter of choice. He had earned his medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh, then went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for training in pediatrics in 1938. There he met a young lady from South Dakota named LaVaun “Vonnie” Gray. They got married and moved to Cleveland for an internal medicine residency at the Cleveland Clinic.

In the summer of 1941, Dr. Wood got called into the U.S. Army for assignment to North Africa.

“My mother fell apart on the detailer’s desk,” said their son David. “She said I’m all alone in Cleveland and pregnant. You can’t take my husband away from me. The guy shuffled through some papers on his desk and said there was an opening for someone to run a lab in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.”

So Dr. Wood served there until his first son was born. Then he was sent to North Africa. But before he left, Vonnie was pregnant again. This time, however, the pregnancy didn’t stop him from being sent overseas.

In North Africa, Captain Wood served in a mobile army hospital that followed the troops who were chasing Rommel through the desert. After North Africa was secured, he moved with his hospital on up into Sicily.

“Dad had one of those short military jackets,” David said. “It had four hash marks on the sleeve. We asked him what they were for. He said each of them represents six months service overseas. He had wanted to come home earlier, but they told him if he did, he would have to go back and serve even longer. Finally after two years he came home.”

But he wasn’t released from the army at that time. He was sent to San Antonio for tropical medicine training. Fortunately, the war in the Pacific ended before he was deployed there.

He returned to practice pediatrics in Sharon until his death in 1976. All five of his sons – Benjamin, Michael, John, Arthur, and David – are doctors. All but Arthur served in the United States armed forces.

He was survived not only by his wife and sons, but also by fifteen grandchildren and nine grandchildren.

George “Jig” Warren

Sharon, PA

U.S. Navy – Vietnam

LST technically stands for Landing Ship Tank, although some of its crewmen referred to them as “large slow targets.” They were some of the most remarkable pieces of equipment in Vietnam, if for no other reason than their endurance. More than 90 LSTs performed vital roles there; all but about ten of them had been built during World War II.

The large, flat-bottomed vessels were designed for hitting the beaches during the invasions in Europe and the Pacific to drop off tanks and other heavy equipment. But because of their load capacity, they were ideal for hauling large shipments of supplies and equipment, as well as armament. That made it functional for two roles: resupplying military units all up and down the whole length of South Vietnam, and patrolling the waterways and coastline of the Mekong Delta, intercepting suspicious vessels.

Jigs Warren arrived in Vietnam to serve on LST 819, Hampshire County, in February, 1967. He had graduated from Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, and attended amphibious school in San Diego before going to Vietnam.

“We moved a lot of food supplies, ammunition, building supplies.” he said, “We also, on occasion, would support river patrol boats with fuel and ammunition.”

It was grueling and dangerous work.

“I really looked at it as a job. I was never and have never been busier in my life,” he said. “We usually worked 20 to 22 hours a day and slept for three or four hours. In 18 months on board ship, I never slept for more than four hours straight.”

His 18-month tour kept him in Vietnam through the Tet offensive in early 1968.

“We had just dropped off some supplies in Hue to build an enlisted club,” he said. “We were out of there by the time the attack happened.”

Jigs said that the Hampshire County was fired upon every single day. At night in Da Nang, the sky sparkled every night with tracers, the illuminated rounds fired by automatic weapons.

“It was nothing but a curtain of tracer bullets around the entire city, every night, every night for a year ,.. that’s all you saw, the entire city engulfed in tracer bullets.”

Jigs felt compassion for the people who suffered most from the war.

“I guess the thing I remember most is the people in Vietnam who were practically overrun by military efforts all the time.”

Harry Jones

Jones, Harry

Sharon, PA

U.S. Navy – World War II

The men close to her called her by the sweet and simple name Sara, but she was anything but sweet or simple. Although she was only 16 years old when the war started, Tokyo Rose called her the old lady. She survived nearly fatal wounds at Iwo Jima on February 21, 1945, only to die a most inglorious death after the war at the tender age of 21.

She was the USS Saratoga (CV3). The New York Shipbuilding Company laid her keel in 1920 as a battle cruiser. World War I had just ended, and imaginative military minds were beginning to envision airplanes flying into combat from the deck of a ship. So in 1922 the Navy decided to convert her into an aircraft carrier.

Launched on April 7, 1925, she was impressive by any standards. Displacing 33,000 tons, measuring 888 feet in length and 106 feet at its widest point, her crew of 2,111 could guide her through the water at a speed of nearly 34 knots – that’s about 40 miles per hour.

The first planes to land on her deck were small, slow biplanes, a far cry from the fast and deadly fighters she later carried into combat. While participating in naval exercises before World War II, Sara was instrumental in developing strategies and tactics for a kind of warfare that had never been seen before.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Sara was in San Diego. She sailed immediately for the South Pacific, refueling in Pearl Harbor before continuing on toward Wake Island.

On January 11, 1942, the Saratoga received her first battle wounds and crew casualties. A torpedo from a Japanese submarine hit her without warning. Six of her crew were killed. She managed to limp back to Hawaii under her own power. She then headed for Bremerton, Washington, on the Puget Sound, for permanent repairs and the addition of improved anti-aircraft guns.

She entered her first intense combat operations in August, 1942, when she launched planes in support of the assault on Guadalcanal. Her planes sank the Japanese carrier Ryujo and damaged the Chitose, a seaplane tender. A week later the Saratoga had to return to Hawaii for repairs after being damaged by a Japanese torpedo.

Sailing from Pearl Harbor on November 10, Sara spent the next year and a half in combat operations in the South Pacific. She provided air support for some of the most legendary island invasions, such as Bougainville, the Marshalls, Eniwetok, and Engebi.

In November, 1943, the Saratoga left the main theaters of the war for nearly a year to participate in exercises with less experienced British and French aircraft carriers. After intensive training, the Saratoga and the British carrier HMS Illustrious conducted very successful attacks on port facilities and oil reserves on Sumatra. In June, 1944, Sara returned to the Bremerton dry docks for repairs.

That’s when Sharon native Harry Jones joined her crew. He had enlisted after completed tenth grade at Sharon High School.

“We lived on Oakland between Hall Street and Oakwood Cemetery,” he said. “When I came home from enlisting, I had to walk up Hall Street. When I turned the corner onto Oakland, my mother was standing on the porch steps. I think I could see the tears coming out of her eyes. I was full of joy yippying and hollering and she felt really bad. I never got over that. She was so sad.”

Jones was supposed complete six weeks of training at Great Lakes Naval Station, but the Navy was so short of men that he spent only three weeks there. After a week’s leave at home, he headed for Bremerton to join the crew of the Saratoga. While the carrier was being repaired, Jones trained to be a plane captain at the naval air station in Arlington, Washington.

When Sara left Washington in September, 1944, headed for Pearl Harbor, Jones found himself in a different world – one with incredible highs and lows.

USS Saratoga underway

“I was out at sea for nine months,” he said, “never saw a pebble, never saw a tree. I’ve been an outdoorsman all of my life. I couldn’t stand it down in the hold. I slept up on the deck right beside the plane. Not all the time, but quite a bit of time. The best time of my life was to see that sun go down in the water and see that moon come up. I tell you, there is nothing in this world could beat that. I enjoyed that every day and every night.”

Well, almost every day and night. There were times when the weather turned a little ugly.

“In a typhoon, I’ve seen that ship roll over to where the side of the ship was running right along the water. I don’t know why it didn’t go right over. That bow would go down under the waves, and the propellers would come up clear out of the water. It was like you were on a roller coaster.”

As plane captain, Harry was assigned to one plane. His job was to maintain it and prepare it for combat operations.

“I spent all my time up on deck with my plane,” he said. “I had to inspect it every day. The checklist had 58 items on it. You couldn’t skip any of them. If that plane just sput when it was taking off, it went right down into the water. Then they only have three minutes to get out of that cockpit before she went down.”

To make sure the plane wouldn’t sput while taking off, he had to get into the pilot’s seat and start it up every day.

“The spark to start it came from something like a shotgun shell,” he said. “You had to rev it up to 1500 rpm to see if it would spit or sputter. Sometimes the plane was real close to the edge of the deck. You would look down and all you would see is water. That thing would be bouncing up and down. You’d look over and think you’re going to take off or fall into the ocean. It scared the hell out of me.”

Harry and his pilot, H. C. Palmatos, weren’t the best of friends.

“He came in one day and said this plane is slowing down. He had me scrub it all down with diesel oil. He said it made it go a couple of knots faster.”

For several months at Pearl Harbor, the Saratoga trained night fighter squadrons and developed the techniques and tactics of night flying. Then on January 29, 1945, she headed out with the USS Enterprise to provide day and night aerial support for the invasion of Iwo Jima.

Jones was thrilled by the sight of the fleet.

“We were in the middle of a fleet of 500 ships,” he said. “Being on top, looking north, south, east, west, all I could see was ships.”

But Jones wasn’t the only one watching the fleet in general, and the Saratoga in particular. The Japanese were watching it, with a focus on the USS Saratoga..

“Tokyo Rose would come on the radio every night and they would play it over the public address system. She would say, ‘We’re looking for you, old lady. We know where the old lady is at. We’re going to get you.’”

On the fateful day of February 21, 1945, Tokyo Rose’s compatriots made good on her prediction. Jones prepared his plane for combat. The pilot, H. C. Palmatos, took off to attack the island. Then, at 1700 hours (5 pm), all hell broke loose. The Japanese hit the Saratoga with the most intense assault of the war against a warship. Within three minutes, they hit the Saratoga with five bombs.

“The first thing they dropped was a skip bomb, then a suicide plane came right after. It made a hole you could drive a semi through, right at the water line. The Saratoga had a closed-in hangar deck. They put a bomb right in there.”

During the fight, which lasted two hours, Sara was strafed with machine guns and hit with seven bombs. Five Kamikaze suicide planes dove into her, their bombs causing huge explosions. Somehow Sara managed to keep afloat and sail away from the battle zone.

The attacks killed 123 men and wounded scores more, including Jones, whose duties required him to be on deck.

“During any attack, most of the crew were assigned to antiaircraft guns,” Jones said. But the aircraft crews were assigned to the fire department.”

While fighting the many fires, Jones remembers running with the bullets from Japanese fighters tearing up the deck on both sides of him. He was hit in the back with a piece of shrapnel.

Two days later, U.S. Marines raised the flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. That is forever memorialized in one of the most famous war monuments in the world. When Sara’s crewmembers see it, they remember their part in the battle. Without setting foot on Iwo Jima, they helped to make that victory possible.

When Jones talks of his worst memories, he doesn’t describe the actual battle. He talks about the aftermath.

Painting of the Saratoga at Iwo Jima

“We stood on deck all day while we buried the dead at sea. That’s the worst thing I had to do in all my life was to stand up there, burying my buddies and friends.”

He also remembers the long voyage back to the United States for repairs.

“You could never get rid of that smell, burnt flesh. You remember it for the rest of your life.”

That was the end of combat for Sara, but not the end of her service. Fully repaired by May 22, she sailed back to Pearl Harbor and resumed pilot training until the Japanese surrendered on August 16. She was then transformed from an aircraft carrier into a magic carpet, bringing veterans back to the United States from the South Pacific. Before the end of Operation Magic Carpet, she had brought 29,204 veterans home, more than any other ship.

After the war, the USS Saratoga was rendered obsolete by larger, more modern carriers. She had one more bit of service to perform, however – not as a hero, but as a victim. In 1946, the United States conducted nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. They sacrificed Sara to determine the effects of the atomic bomb on naval vessels. She was sunk by an underwater bomb detonated 500 yards away.

To those conducting the testing, the USS Saratoga was an inanimate floating conglomeration of metal that deserved nothing more than to be sacrificed in the name of progress. But to the sailors and airmen who served on Sara, she was a very personal friend and fellow combatant.

Plane Talk, the Saratoga’s newspaper, described that crew on Thanksgiving, 1943: “Aboard the Saratoga we have the gol’darndest collection of farmers, bakers, saxophone players, carpenters, machinists, lawyers, school teachers, insurance men and Texas cowboys that ever assembled aboard a flat-top.”

The paper also summarized their respect for Sara herself: “The Saratoga is more than a ship; it is an idea and a dream. . . . Since the day when the Saratoga first hit the waves until now, it has existed but for one purpose: to protect the freedom to which we as a nation are pledged.”

Sara is at the bottom of the Bikini Atoll, and most of her crew are gone, but her dream, her legacy, deserves to endure. The next time you look at the Iwo Jima memorial, pay tribute not only to those Marines who raised the flag, but also to Sara, her crew, and all the sailors, airmen, and soldiers who helped make that possible.

Jack Wallace

Sharon, PA

U.S. Marine Corps – Vietnam

Trying to discover the facts about what went on in Vietnam is very tricky. Strange ideas seem to spring up out of nowhere.

For example, there is a persistent belief that Jack Wallace was a “tunnel rat” in Vietnam – one of these crazy people who would crawl into VC tunnels with a flashlight and a .45 pistol to root out the enemy. Jack himself certainly wasn’t the one who came up with that idea.

“I have no idea where that came from,” he said. “I was an electronics repairman in Chu Lai.”

Jack had enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1966. He volunteered for Vietnam several times before they finally sent him. He arrived there shortly after the 1967 Tet offensive.

What he found was a strange kind of war.

“The people who worked in our bases were from the villages around us,” he said. “Our people told you to watch them when they were walking things off. We got hit by a lot of rockets and you had to wonder how they knew where to fire them.”

Even within the U.S. military there seemed to be an element of distrust, or at least a lack of respect. Jack was stationed in Chu Lai, about 350 miles to the northeast of Saigon, as the crow flies. He got a four-day pass to visit his uncle in Saigon, but he had to figure out for himself how to get there. He caught rides on a plane, a helicopter, and a convoy. But the strangest part occurred when he got to Saigon.

“I tried to find a place to bunk on Tan Son Nhut Airbase, but they wouldn’t let me stay there because I wasn’t Air Force. The Army wouldn’t put me up, either. Finally the Navy put me up because I was a Marine, but they locked up all my weapons. I think I was the only person walking around Saigon without a weapon.”

Jack admired the people of Vietnam.

“The thing that amazed me was in some of the villages they didn’t have anything. They had years of war, but they were able to shrug it all off and raise families and be happy.”

What Jack got out of his Vietnam experience was an attitude toward life. “You have the ability to do anything you want if you try hard enough. Never give up. Don’t dwell on the past. Think of the future and press on.”

Jesse James Coon

Hickory Township, PA

U.S. Army, Vietnam

Sp4 Jesse James Coon had a rare assignment in Vietnam. He was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division Headquarters and Headquarters Company – to play in the division’s band. The 9th Division had a long tradition of bands in combat zone. They had one all the way back in World War II.

One might think that it would be a cushy assignment, away from the dangers that the 9th Division soldiers faced every day as part of the Riverine Force in the Mekong Delta. But the Headquarters and Headquarters Company and Band received a Meritorious Unit Citation, not for playing good music, but for support of combat operations.

During one of these operations, on April 23, 1968, Sp4 Coon was riding in a military vehicle in the Mekong Delta. An enemy hand grenade thrown into the vehicle rolled under the driver’s seat. Sp4 Coon could have rolled out of the vehicle and saved himself. Instead, he grabbed the grenade and tried to throw it out of the vehicle. It exploded before he could do that. Sp4 Coon was killed, but the driver survived.

He was posthumously promoted to Sgt. E-5 and awarded the Bronze Star with “V” device for valor.

Jesse was born in Sharon on August 30, 1947, to Billy Coon Jr. and Mrs. Anna Roman Coon. He attended Farrell High School, but graduated from Hickory High School in 1966. He worked for Sharon General Hospital, Cohen’s Store, and the General American Transportation Corp. before entering the service in October, 1966. His tour in Vietnam started on February 5, 1968.

Jesse left behind his father and stepmother, Julia H. Yourchisin Coon; three brothers, William, John and Richard; one sister, Mary Irene; and grandparents, Mrs. Marie Roman, New Wilmington, and Mr. and Mrs. Nick Yourchisin, Hickory Township.

A message posted on the Internet expressed the feelings of many who came back from Vietnam: “I remember Jesse in basic training. He was always making the rest of us laugh. I am very sorry he died so young. I served in Viet Nam too, and sometimes I feel guilty that I came home and so many didn’t.”

On the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Panel 51E Line 37

John Leyde

Leyde, John

Sharon, PA

U. S. Coast Guard, World War II

Like many other young men during World War II, John Leyde left for military service in 1943 before his Sharon High School graduation ceremony. It took two years for his diploma to catch up with him through the military postal system.

“I enlisted in the Coast Guard,” he said. “I wanted to go into the Air Force, but at that time they were taking a pretty big beating, so my mother said no way. I said if that’s the case, let me try the Marines. But they were taking a beating in the Pacific. So finally I said to my mother, ‘I’ll join the Coast Guard.’

The image of John guarding the coast satisfied his mother. But it didn’t take long for John to discover that Coast Guard ships didn’t necessarily float around near the shores of the United States.

After basic training, John was assigned to the USS Peterson. This wasn’t a little 65-foot Coast Guard cutter. It was a newly-commissioned destroyer escort.

“It had made just one trip in the Mediterranean prior to my going on.” John said. “They lost a ship with tremendous loss of life. Then they came back to the States. That’s when I went aboard. We went out for a day or two on a shakedown cruise off the coast of Long Island and then went back in to New York.”

The Peterson spent the next two years on convoy duty on the Atlantic Ocean between New York and the British Isles.

“We escorted tankers, and sometimes they would put a troop ship in the middle of all these tankers – maybe 40 to 50 of them. And there were six destroyer escort ships that looked for submarines.”

It was adventurous from the very beginning. After its shakedown cruise, The Peterson was assigned to accompany a newly-formed convoy.

“When they brought the convoy out,” John said, “we patrolled out into the ocean. In bringing these big ships together to form the convoy, two of them collided. One of them was damaged. We were designated to escort that disabled ship back into the harbor.”

A German submarine apparently had been sitting out off the coast for days. It put a torpedo into one of the ships and damaged it pretty bad.

“While we escorted it back, our ships were running all over the ocean looking for this German sub. On our way back out, we ran right over top of it with our sound gear. That just let everything go helter-skelter. Our ship and another ship went on each side of this submarine and dropped depth charges. When they brought it to the surface, we started shooting and he started shooting. The sub put a cannon blast through our smokestack.”

The Germans were able to use a machine gun from the conning tower, but not the gun on the forward part of the sub.

“They were trying to get it manned,” John said. “It was pathetic, really. These young German sailors were trying to get from the conning tower to the forward gun. We were cross-firing with 20mm guns. They never did get it manned because they got blown apart.”

The Peterson didn’t pick up any survivors, but a sister ship did. The submarine captain had been told that it would be easy because the Germans had done such a good job that we didn’t have any ships left.

“He couldn’t believe it when he saw 40 or 50 big ships coming out of the harbor. It was right off the coast of New Jersey. He got a free ride to England and was put in prison camp there.”

The Pete made eight round trips between New York, England, and France. Each took about six weeks. When the war was over in Europe, the Peterson was transferred to the Pacific because the war there was continuing.

“We were tied up in Hawaii just waiting for orders when VJ Day was declared,” John said. “But they still sent us to Japan. There we escorted landing craft which went about six knots. Then we headed back home to be discharged. We had a lot of ammo on board – depth charges and everything else. We were going into Hawaii, and got word to get rid of all our ammunition. So we shot off everything we had. When we got to Hawaii, they loaded us all up again with ammo. Then we headed for California. A day or two out, we got the word again: no ammunition. So the captain, being a pretty good guy, said throw it over the side. We don’t want to have to clean these guns again. We went to Florida and decommissioned the ship in the St. John’s River.”

After the war he took a train to Philadelphia where he was discharged from the Coast Guard.

“I came home and went to work with my father and older brother in the family’s auto parts business. And that was where I worked my whole life.”

John got married in 1948. He and his wife Margaret had three children – John T. in 1950, Margaret Jean in 1953, and Elizabeth Ann in 1955.

John was very active in the community. He served on the school board for 20 years; volunteered for the Community Chest; was a trustee, member of the stewardship committee, and Sunday School teacher at his church; and became the first man to be named Volunteer of the Year at Sharon Regional.