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Click on links below to view other recent newspaper articles WWII memorial dedicated01:00 AM EST on Monday, November 12, 2007
Journal photo / Sandor Bodo
 Nick
Buonanno, 10, shows his mother, Mary BethBuonanno, the name of her uncle
on
PROVIDENCE — John Baldinelli and John Boezi have been friends for 50 years, ever since their days bowling at Legion Bowl in Cranston. If you’re keeping track, Boezi was by far the better bowler, mostly because his buddy was too busy cracking jokes to amuse the girls. Both married women named Mary. Today, Baldinelli and Boezi, both of Cranston, are in their 80s and use walking canes; Boezi’s wife passed away a few years ago. The men’s “headquarters,” as Boezi puts it, is a Tim Hortons on Pontiac Avenue. The friends, both World War II veterans who served with the Army in the Pacific and in Europe, found a perch on the steps overlooking the new World War II Memorial, in Memorial Park on South Main Street, a half-hour before yesterday’s dedication ceremony. The dedication of the stately, eight-columned circular memorial, was too long in coming, the two said. But, said 85-year old Baldinelli, “I’m just happy to be here to see this.” Every year leaves the Greatest Generation with fewer and fewer of its living patriots. So, too, Baldinelli fears, does the memory fade of what the young men and women sacrificed. “A lot of young people don’t know that World War II is the war that stopped other wars,” Baldinelli said. “America is not what it used to be. America is starting to fade away. “We did what we had to do, and we served with pride.” Hundreds of World War II veterans and their families, plus state dignitaries and dozens of younger servicemen and women, crowded Memorial Park in yesterday’s brisk sunshine to greet arriving marchers in a Veteran’s Day parade through downtown and dedicate the $1.3-million memorial, which had been in the works for four years. The granite memorial honors the 2,562 Rhode Islanders who died in the war. The ceremony applauded them and the memorial’s first champion, Joseph T. Corrente, of Cranston, a World War II veteran. Corrente was at yesterday’s ceremony and spoke briefly, although he has been plagued by illness in recent months. “There are many hands that built this memorial, but there is one great heart, Joe Corrente,” U.S. Sen. Jack Reed told the crowd. Yesterday’s message could be read in the patches worn by many of the men: “Vets don’t forget.” The memorial, Reed said, is proof that “your victory will stand through all the ages.” A volunteer commission in August revived a flagging campaign to raise nearly $600,000 to finish building the monument. Donations from 2,600 people — many of them veterans — ranging from as little as 50 cents to as much as $100,000, made the project possible. More is still needed. One veteran’s letter typified the response, according to Cranston City Council President Aram G. Garabedian, a memorial commission member. “He said, ‘Here’s my $5. Now get the damn thing done!’ ” Garabedian said, to knowing laughter. “This monument is not only about the veterans, it is also about educating future generations that the freedom they enjoy is only secure as long as we are willing to sacrifice to preserve it,” Garabedian said. Earlier yesterday, Raymond Rondeau attended Veterans Day services in his city, Woonsocket. He and his friend Tom Nunes, of West Warwick, are Korean War veterans, but they came to the Providence ceremony to support their fellow veterans. “We all stick together,” Nunes said. “You’re losing a lot of World War II vets every day,” Rondeau said. “To me, it was much too long” to build this memorial. “If it wasn’t for somebody taking the bull by the horns, it wouldn’t have happened.” Like many of the ceremony’s speakers, Rondeau referred to the more than 3,000 Rhode Islanders who have served or are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. “There’s all this talk about the Iraq war, but people never stop and think what these guys are going through in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Rondeau said. “When we were fighting, we knew who the enemy was. They don’t.” Frank Knight, of Warwick, managed to find his way through the crowd after the ceremony to view the plaque honoring the Pacific campaign. Knight, who turns 85 next month, served in the Navy for the entire length of the war on the minesweeper Motive. “This is the greatest thing I have ever seen,” Knight said. “My heart is shaking.” Donations to complete memorial honor those who sacrificed most12:19 AM EDT on Friday, September 21, 2007
The checks and dollar bills arrive with notes enclosed. Most are handwritten bits of stories conveying remembrance or appreciation and in many cases heartache, still, 62 years after the war. “In memory of Billy who died in WWII,” scrawled Michelina Rizzo, of Providence, on an index card that accompanied her $30 check. “My donation is in memory of my childhood friend who was killed in 1944,” wrote Nicolino Montefusco, who donated $25. “U.S. Navy Arthur Breslin.” A few of the hundreds of contributions now coming in to the World War II Memorial Commission are anonymous: “Sorry it’s not more,” wrote one person who included a $5 bill, “but I am 90 years old and on a tight budget.” .... “Let’s get this honorable task finished!” read another slip of paper, mailed with two single dollar bills. The notes employ a lexicon of a generation past: “I was a WAVE”… “He was a Seabee”…. “He was a tailgunner on a B-17”…. “...he died in the Battle of the Bulge.” Last month, supporters of the unfinished World War II memorial in Providence launched a new effort to raise nearly $600,000 and finally finish the $1.3-million project by Nov. 11, Veterans Day. Construction of the South Main Street monument in Providence began four years ago but became plagued by delays and design plans that eclipsed fundraising efforts. For more than a year, work stood at a standstill as bills mounted and the project’s main promoter, Joseph T. Corrente, of Cranston, fell ill. Now a month after the new fundraising effort began, the memorial commission, a nonprofit organization, has received more than 700 donations totaling at least $83,000. A landscaping company has volunteered to prepare the memorial grounds for free. The governor’s office is planning a breakfast soon for more than 100 movers and shakers in hopes of raising about $100,000 in corporate donations. And local congressional members have pledged to make a federal appropriations request next year for $200,000. “I’m telling you because everybody is committed to this project that we are going to hold an opening for this gorgeous memorial on the 11th of November,” said commission spokeswoman Libby Arron yesterday. But more money needs to be raised, said Arron. And despite the wishes of Sal and Rena Abbruzzese, who donated saying, “No veteran should have to donate; they did enough,” many of those who have answered the call for help are veterans or relatives of veterans. Many are on fixed incomes. People like Anne Leventhal, 91, of Cranston, who donated $25. Her first husband, Harry Freidenrich, died when Germans bombed his ship off the African coast on Nov. 26, 1943. Unanswered questions surrounding his death still pull at her six decades later: Did he die instantly in the initial attack? Did he drown waiting to be rescued? “There are all kinds of love,” Mrs. Leventhal said, “but you can’t lose someone who was very special and forget. I was very fortunate in remarrying a fine soldier, too. He was tops, but it still doesn’t take away the pain.” Perhaps, Mrs. Leventhal said, her generation is giving because “when you get to be my age, you’re more aware of things and I think the compassion is deeper.” Ruth F. Conyers, 89, formerly of Pawtucket and now of Manchester, Conn., donated $100 in the name of her late brother ,John W. Hesketh, a pilot who went down over Belgium on Sept. 19, 1944. “He had just turned 24 when he was killed,” she said in a telephone interview. “He would have been 87 today. Even when my father died at 89 he was still thinking of him. It was a big blow to the family, like it was for so many others.” Mrs. Conyers said she made a second $100 donation to the memorial after reading of the trouble the commission had raising money to finish the project. “This means an awful lot to me.” She wants her brother’s name on the memorial’s honor wall with the other 2,561 Rhode Islanders who died during the war. “This is so important that they be recognized.” Robert Tetreault, 92, wrote his note to the commission in cursive, explaining how he served overseas in the Philippines during the war, a sergeant with the 13th Army Air Corps. When he got to explaining how his Marine brother died of wounds suffered at Iwo Jima, he took care to print his name out carefully in capital letters: PVT. MARCEL G. TETREAULT. “He was wounded at the landing when they assaulted the island,” Tetreault explained in a telephone interview. “They evacuated him to the island of Guam where the naval base was. He died March 18th, 1945.” They buried Marcel Tetreault on Guam. When in 1948 the government offered to move him and the thousands of others who died at Iwo Jima, “my mother and I agreed to bring him back home. He’s in Notre Dame Cemetery in Pawtucket.” Tetreault, who lives at the Rhode Island Veterans Home, in Bristol, gave $25 toward finishing the memorial because “I want to see my brother’s name on it. He deserves to be on it.” “I got a friend of mine here and I’m talking him into contributing, too,” said Tetreault. “He’s not capable of doing it all himself but I told him I would fill it all out for him and send it off if he wants to donate.” Lanka Rose, 83, of Providence, addressed her poignant note directly to the war’s veterans: “Thank you for liberating me from Hitler’s death camps,” she wrote. “I am forever grateful to the WWII veterans to bring me back to life.” Lanka, raised in eastern Czechoslovakia, suffered through the war imprisoned in Auschwitz and other concentration camps where, she said in an interview, “I endured total humiliation and utter contempt for human life.” It is strange how the mind works sometimes, she said. “It’s the pleasant things you seem to forget. It’s the horrible things that seem to store themselves in your subconscious. You have to be strong. Whenever bad things come to me I say, ‘I will not let Hitler prevail upon me.’ ”And she remembers again the American GIs who saved her. “They should go down in history for what kind of war they fought and what kind of evil man they fought,” she said. “There were so many sons and fathers who lost their lives so we can live in liberty today.” Peggy Munslow Swann, 56, of Coventry, signed her donation note using her maiden name to honor her father. Her donation — and her letter to the commission — were part of her birthday gift to him: “Please accept this donation for the World War II Memorial in honor of my father, Stanley Munslow. As a member of the 13th Air Force, Dad was stationed in the South Pacific, specifically in New Guinea and the Philippine Islands. Although he was just nineteen years old at the time, he served his country with courage, dignity and honor.” Swann presented a copy of the letter to her father on his recent 83rd birthday. “I wanted him to know how I felt about what he did. It was a long time ago but it was such an important event in their lives. They don’t ever forget it. It changed who they were, I’m sure.” The memorial must be completed, Swann said, “to honor them and the sacrifices they made for us.” The second part of her father’s birthday gift will come on Veterans Day, Swann said, when she takes her father to Memorial Park on South Main Street for the memorial’s official opening. The veterans of World War II are dying by the thousands each month. Madeleine Ryan, 80, of Chepachet, can recite the math. Her husband, Andrew, trekked across Europe with the Army quartermasters and came home whole. He worked 35 years for the Blackstone Valley Electric Co., never talking much about the war, before dying five years ago. She cares for his old Army uniform and keeps his memory close. “I can well remember those days,” she said. “My husband was one of the fortunate ones.” She contributed $50 in her late husband’s name. She would give more if she could. If there were more World War II veterans around, you could bet they’d take care of this memorial situation, she said. “But there aren’t many of them left around, so I hope everybody steps up to the plate, especially organizations that can pay more. Those of us who are just little ordinary citizens can’t contribute huge amounts.” Those wishing to make a tax-deductible contribution to help finish the project can send their donations to: The World War II Memorial Commission, 408 Broadway, Providence, RI, 02909. Jack Afonso runs his hand over his “honor
wall” containing the names of those who died in service during World War II.
The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman SEEKONK — America H. Colatacci. Irenee N. Cloutier. Herman E. Colitz. The names are engraved onto granite slabs with 2,559 others, each in
remembrance of a Rhode Islander who died during World War II in service to his
country.
But to see them today you have to visit Jack Afonso’s
Seekonk stone company, Riverside Stone, walk out into the work area and lift
the thick plastic sheets that have protected the eight elegant stones and
their black-lettered inscriptions from dust and delay for almost three years.
Afonso calls the stones his “honor wall” and they don’t
belong here, he says. They belong where the public can see and honor them: at the
entrance to the unfinished World War II Memorial that stands behind chainlink
fencing along South Main Street in Providence. “This has become a very personal project for me,” said Afonso, who working
closely with Joseph T. Corrente, of Cranston, visited Washington monuments and
researched World War II history to design the eight-columned memorial. Two weeks ago, supporters of the memorial launched a campaign to raise
renewed interest and the almost $600,000 needed to finally finish the project
by this Veterans Day, Nov. 11, after about a year of virtual standstill. On Friday, Libby Arron, a spokeswoman for the memorial commission, gushed
with optimism. The memorial commission had received about 60 donations totaling more than
$15,000 since the new campaign began, and more pledges were coming in. “One man could only afford a dollar and he sent a dollar,” she said. “Even
that one dollar was a hardship but he wanted us to have it.” Reginald Centraccio, the former commanding general of the Rhode Island
National Guard and now the honorary chairman of the memorial commission,
donated $1,000, Arron said. And U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has pledged
$1,000. Local businesses were also starting to call in with pledges. “I think they are waking up to the fact that this is of great importance
and they want to be a part of it,” Arron said. “It’s really wonderful.” Local banks had not yet answered a challenge by former Gov. Bruce Sundlun
to contribute to the project, said Arron. But she had faith they ultimately
would. “Once you get some of the big ones to make a firm commitment, everyone else
will join the bandwagon ,” she said. “We all feel very strongly it’s going to
happen.” It has to, she said. “We owe it to them,” she said, the veterans who served and died. “If these
people who died for us hadn’t helped win the war, where would we be today?
Under the rule of Germany? Japan? People gave their cousins, uncles, brothers,
sisters, fathers, mothers in this war. We owe it to them.” Rhode Island has another World War II monument, at Rhode Island Veterans
Cemetery, in Exeter. Construction of the $1,325,000 Providence monument began four years ago but
became plagued by delays, design changes and storage fees for some of the
imported stone from Portugal and Vermont. Then Corrente, described as the heart and soul of the project, fell ill and
fundraising and actual work on the memorial all but stopped. Those wishing to make a tax-deductible contribution can send their
donations to: The World War II Memorial Commission, 408 Broadway, Providence,
RI, 02909. One more mission to complete01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 15, 2007
PROVIDENCE Four years after construction began and now with its chief planner ailing and in a nursing home, supporters of the World War II Memorial on South Main Street made an urgent public call for help yesterday.
Standing in front of the eight-columned amphitheater that has been ringed by chainlink fencing now for years, Reginald Centraccio said: “This is the launch of the last campaign to get this monument finished.” Centraccio, the former head of the state National Guard and now the honorary chairman of the monument commission, said almost $600,000 must be raised — and quickly — if the monument is to be completed and opened for Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
“We are telling the story of patriots,” Centraccio said. “We need to keep telling the story … so every single generation will never forget what these soldiers did.” In total, 2,562 Rhode Islanders died while serving during World War II. Their names have yet to be engraved in the monument as planned. Another 94,000 or so other Rhode Islanders also served, including Joseph T. Corrente, 85, of Cranston, who made it his passion, friends said yesterday, to get the monument erected. But the project bogged down in delays. The commission wanted to match the granite of the World War II Memorial with that used in the World War I Memorial, just north of the site in Memorial Park. But the quarry in Maine ran out of granite. The commission eventually found a source of stone in Portugal. Design changes, storage fees for the granite, lack of fundraising efforts and Corrente’s failing health brought the project to a virtual standstill. Libby Arron, a spokeswoman for the memorial commission, said so far $953,750 of the monument’s $1,325,000 price tag has been raised. But the commission also has to pay back Corrente, who loaned them $200,000 for the project, so the total needed for completion is about $571,150. Representatives of various veterans’ groups, along with several dignitaries, attended yesterday’s announcement. Former Gov. Bruce Sundlun, himself a World War II pilot, criticized the Rhode Island banking industry, saying it had largely ignored the project. “I’m here today to point a finger at the financial part of the state … that has not helped,” he said. Only one of the state’s banks — he wouldn’t say which one — has donated to the cause. It’s time the others “roll up their sleeves and get that $600,000,” Sundlun said. “Six hundred thousand is nothing to the bank community. It’s nothing.” Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams said, “These great Americans who served and died for us are leaving us at a rate of 30,000 a month” nationally. “It would seem to me the greatest tribute to get this monument completed by Veterans Day.” Mike Minutelli, an 85-year-old former PT boat sailor, noted that the day was the 62nd anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. It was “a terrible, terrible war” that needs remembering, he said. Quoting another PT boat sailor, John F. Kennedy, Minutelli said: “We celebrate the past to awaken the future,” and he called on Rhode Island’s roughly 100,000 other veterans to contribute. If each veteran put in $5, he said, the project could just about be completed. The memorial forms a sunny circle in the middle of a grove of shade trees diagonally across South Main Street from Superior Court. Each of the memorial’s eight columns represents various campaigns and major battles during the 4½ year war. Centraccio said much more granite work and landscaping is needed to complete the project. The granite floor within the circle of columns is to show a world map where the battles took place. A series of 14 granite benches are planned around the periphery and beside two walls near the entrance, which will be engraved with the names of the war dead. “Every Rhode Islander will be proud when they see this finished monument,” pledged Ernest Pitocelli, another commission member. “The contract America has with those who serve is we will not forget. We will always remember,” said Robert Bray, adjutant general of the Rhode Island National Guard. “We must continue that commitment to never forget.” Those wishing to donate can send checks to: The World War II Memorial Commission, 408 Broadway, Providence, RI, 02909. Return to top of pageFinal fundraising push to finish WWII Memorial01:00 AM EDT on Monday, August 13, 2007
PROVIDENCE — Veterans and other supporters of the World War II Memorial, now partly built in the Memorial Park beside the Providence River, are about to start an aggressive effort to raise money to get the memorial finished by this fall. Former state Adjutant Gen. Reginald A. Centracchio, acting chairman of the World War II Memorial Commission, said the state needs a central memorial to the Rhode Islanders who fought in that war. The park now contains the tall, fluted column of the World War I memorial, and the Korean War memorial, a statue of a GI in a parka, holding a rifle and crouching on one knee. The new memorial is to include the names of 2,340 Rhode Islanders who died in World War II. Centracchio said the goal is to complete the memorial by November. There’s a degree of urgency in completing the memorial, in that World War II veterans are reaching the ends of their lives. Centracchio said that nationally 1,100 veterans of that war die every day. The World War II memorial is a circle of eight columns amid the trees near the south end of the park. It is complete enough to show its design, but is fenced off. Centracchio said the commission’s immediate goal is to finish raising the roughly $1.2 million needed to complete it. He said he will have the exact figures tomorrow. In past statements the commission has said it was about halfway there. Centracchio, who has been honorary commission chairman, said he agreed to become acting chairman because the chairman, Joseph T. Corrente, has been ill and hospitalized. He said he expects donations from the public, particularly from veterans, saying there is “a genuine desire for veterans of all wars” to commemorate World War II. The memorial is being build by Riverside Stone Co.. The stone for the rest of the memorial has been quarried and is being stored, Centracchio said. Getting the stone wasn’t easy. The commission wanted to match the granite of the World War II Memorial with that used in the World War I Memorial, but the quarry in Maine ran out of granite. The next closest source was in northwestern Canada, and the logistics of getting the stone to Rhode Island was “unbelievable,” Corrente said at the time. The commission eventually found a source of stone in Portugal. Return to top of page |
