. . Dave Lots joined the Navy in 1964, while the Vietnam War was heating up. As an avionics technician, he served as aircrew aboard WW II era P-2 Neptune anti-submarine aircraft. In summer of 2013, Debby Rampolla and director Paula Kelly of Whitehall Public Library contacted us about a group
. . Henry Link took flying lessons as a teenager in the Great Depression near his home in the Banksville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1941, he joined the navy and became a pilot, but instead of being sent into combat he was sent to Texas to train other navy air crews.
. . George Kolsun always wanted to fly. And during WW II he did, but not in the way he expected. “I wanted to be a pilot, but the Army put me into an airborne infantry unit.” Gliders! One of the most dangerous flying contraptions of the war. Worse, he was
. . Howard Pfeifer had never heard of the Merchant Marines when a cousin in the Navy advised him to join in 1943. “You know you’re going to be drafted, and you’ll go wherever they need you,” he said. But, in the Merchant Marines, Howard could call his own shots. Eager
. . Ed Kelly Ed Kelly was drafted into the Navy after completing his medical internship at Mercy Hospital in 1968. He shipped to Vietnam and served as a field medical officer with the 3rd Marine Division, a job that required him to go out on patrols and order medivac
. . John Justi John J. Justi left his hometown of New Brighton, Pennsylvania to serve as an infantryman in the US Army during WWII. Previously as a high school senior working weekends at the Jones & Laughlin steel mill along the Ohio River, John routinely watched newly-built war-bound LSTs
