Men and Women who served in World War II
There was a separate section for each town. It was obviously printed off an old typewriter.
Supporting documentation inside the binder informs me that this list was obtained by placing ads in the local newspapers in 1946 – one year after the war – asking for families to write to “S.B. Richards” on West Cliff Street in Somerville to provide the name and town of those who served during this global conflict.
Constructed around 1943 names were printed on the display as the local men and women joined the armed forces. The total number, that appeared at the top of the display, would be updated occasionally. Surviving photos show that 852 was the final number.
Raritan historian Don Esposito recalls that his boy scout troop would hold events there in the early 1950s, but sometime after that the Honor Roll display was taken down and discarded. Thus, the list of the names that was once so carefully recorded and cherished was gone.
For our inclusion criteria we have decided to be generous as our database will not just include anyone who lived in Raritan at the time they joined service, but also include a few others who lived in Raritan when they were young, then years later (but before WWII) join the service from another town.
To “reconstruct” the list, we need to find and add the missing names.
To “enhance” our list, we need to add information for each name such as the “branch of service” (army, navy, marines …), home address in Raritan, and if they were awarded any medals.
Jimmie Tozzi, Benny Paliani, Michael DeCicco,
William Hratko, & Joe DiMaggio
To gather our additional names, we first check these old directories (Polk’s) that are available at the Bridgewater Library. These directories are not well known or widely referenced, but they contain a roster of most of the adults in Raritan along with their address and (usually) their occupation which often was shown to be a “branch of service” in the military.
A search through the 1944 directory provides us many additional names that we add to the newly discovered Richard’s list. In addition to just new names, here we find addresses and “branch of service” for many existing names.
This author read through the surviving issues from the war years of Raritan’s weekly newspaper – The Raritan Valley News. (These newspapers are in a private collection). They contain a wide range of information such as who from Raritan was a “Prisoner of War” and who was wounded. That detail can now be added to “Raritan’s World War II Database”.
Fortunately, if a soldier or sailor was mentioned in an article the newspaper made sure to identify the person’s branch of service, home address, and state whether they had siblings serving in the war. Very useful information for this project.
After the search through the Polk’s Directories and the old newspapers, our database has much more information. But we are still short many names and for many of the names that we have we do not have an address or know the “branch of service”. To fill in some of these blanks we turn to the internet. We email the usual mailing list of Raritan contacts.
Also, on social media we put out the word that this database is being formed and can be viewed online for anyone to inspect. Thus, we receive many new names and information gaps are closed as relatives contact us.
With this article we further reach out to the public to fill in the blanks.
The database can be seen at
www.raritan-online.com/hr-raritan.pdf
Additions or corrections are welcome and can be emailed to brucedoorly@gmail.com.
Also, if anyone wants an Excel spreadsheet (or PDF) of the database, just send an email asking for such.
Dominic Porcaro & Steve Sabol
At the current time there are 837 names on “Raritan’s World War II Database”.
Of these 88% have a known “branch of service” and for 96% we know what street they lived on. The information in this database should be interesting to anyone who ever lived in Raritan.
The number of Raritan families that had multiple siblings serving their country is amazing. The Delrocco Family had five brothers and the Glaser Family had five siblings - including nurse Charlotte.
Many other families have four brothers – Musz, Strelko, Grayovski, Vitaliano, Dobrosky, and Troisi.
Top - Mike and Frank
Bottom - Joe, Jimmy, & Steve
One guy, that we have a parade for every year, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross.
We have identified 30 recipients of the Purple Heart – a medal that is given to those wounded in battle.
Our online database has all these names. Check it out.
Currently only five people in our database are known to be alive as of January 2022. They are John Hudak, Tony Lettieri, James Esposito, John Orrechio, and Gene Moretti. Are there any more? Please let us know.
In our database we show 14 women. We rightly include two women who served overseas in a non-military role. Kaye Russell as a USO Entertainer and Mary Elizabeth Street worked for the Red Cross. This author hopes to write a future article about the women of World War II.
Through this new research we find that eight Raritan men were “prisoners of war”. All but one, Reverend Koskamp, would survive the war. A future article will tell of them as well.
Remarkably 5 of 7 of today’s mayor and council have relatives on that list.
Councilman Paul Giraldi’s father Philip was in the army.
Nicolas Carra’s great uncle John Hudak served in the Navy.
Councilwoman Joyce Melitsky had two uncles serve in the war.
Councilwoman Joan Huztler’s father Michael Melitski served in the army.
Lastly, Mayor Zack Bray’s distant relative Dominic Baldini was killed in the war.
As for a permanent physical memorial, this author has a proposed design that he will share in the upcoming issue of the Breeze. It would be wonderful to have the names of the men and women who served their country displayed somewhere in town just as it was done during World War II.