Peter Fesovich

Bristolian served with MacArthur Honor Guard.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com


Army First Sergeant Peter J. Fesovich attended East Conemaugh High School as part of the class of 1945. There, Peter was a star basketball athlete and was one of 11 children. Peter’s wife, Joanne Louise, a retired nurse after 32 years, also attended East Conemaugh and met Peter in 1952 at a basketball game.

At the height of the steel industry in Johnstown, where Fesovich resided, mills spread out over 13 miles along the Little Conemaugh and Stonycreek Rivers. They ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, both to keep up with demand and to keep the furnaces going.

If they were allowed to go cold, it took days for them to get hot enough again to melt iron ore. Faster than anyone dreamed, the mills were closing. Instead of smoke and fire lighting up the night, there was quiet. Thousands of workers lost their jobs.

In 1954, Pete was asked to investigate transfer options to the U.S. Steel Fairless Works in Fairless Hills as he was job class 14, proficiently experienced in the hot, galvanized, cold roll sheet and tin-rolling mills, earning a top pay of $2.80 per hour.

But the real heroics in Peter's life came soon after his graduation when he entered the armed forces. After leaving high school, his mom simply stated to him, “America needs soldiers.”
He obediently went to the recruiting office where he was told to “go home because he wouldn’t be 18 for two more weeks.” Pete rationalized, saying “Put down that I’m okay; it’ll take two weeks to get where I’m going.”

His first stop was Fort Meade, MD, named for General George G. Meade, a Union Army general in the U.S. Civil War, for the mandatory inoculations.

Then Peter was off to Fort Knox, Ky., to join the Third Armored Tank Corps Division, nicknamed the Spearhead Division, of the U.S. Army. It first activated in 1941 and was a key participant in the European Theater of World War II.

Pete explains that the tanks didn’t have the faster swivel in the turret traverse speed and were not like the tanks they have today, “If they had these tanks, I’d still be in the army at 80 years old!”

He never actually even used the tanks. He “thought he was going to ETO [European Theatre of Operations] but went to the Pacific.”

Pete was recruited for the Honor Guard, the top outfit in the service, for MacArthur from October through November 1946. Although Five Star General Douglas MacArthur was the top-ranking military leader in the Pacific, he had no troops directly in his command. The honor guard was formed in May 1945, to perform security and other tasks for MacArthur, who had a profound effect on the world stage, as a symbol of his authority and separateness.

Looking toward the future, he envisioned a need and role for a special unit under his control, a “crack” company of Infantrymen to serve as his personal security force, which was to include excellent character, fluent in Russian, Peter J. Fesovitch.

His order began, “The C-in-C desires that a special Guard Company be organized for providing local security for the Commander-in-Chief and General Headquarters installations.”

Minimum security by a single company of the exemplary soldiers served the General and guarded the Imperial Palace without fail from Manila to Tokyo.

After returning home from the service, Peter and wife Joanne have resided on Pond Street since 1957. They fell in love with the wharf along the Delaware River and the single home with a fireplace in the neighborhood that reminded them of their hometown Conemaugh, an Indian name meaning “long fishing place.”

*****
The Fesovich family includes Robert Faight, retired from nuclear medicine, and grandson, Bristol Borough Police officer Peter Faight. Owner of Radcliffe Learning Center is granddaughter, Chrissy DeLuca.

Pete and Joanne now love to read and live a simple life, until the World Series rolls around. Pete cheers for the NY Yankees and Joanne’s a Phillies fan.

*****
Cate Murway contributed to this article.

Pete Palestina

U.S. Marine Corps forever changed his life.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com


“Oh my God, he’s going to get killed.”

Northampton Township resident Pete Palestina can still hear his mother’s reaction as he told his father over the phone from the North Broad Street recruiting office that he had been drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps.

It was Feb. 1, 1966 and the Vietnam War was raging.

Growing up in a heavily Italian neighborhood in South Philadelphia, Palestina wanted to do two things with his life – be a mobster or a cop. The last thing he wanted was a tour in Vietnam.

“That’s just what I didn’t need to hear,” said Palestina, of his mother’s words. Up to that point, he had done everything to avoid the Corps, and with good reason. During the days of Vietnam, no other branch of service had a higher casualty rate.

Just weeks earlier, he had turned down a six-month commitment to the Marines. “Here I could have gone for six months, but now I’m being drafted. It was like a nightmare,” he said.

But life has its ironies.

Instead of being shipped to Vietnam like he expected, Palestina was assigned duties as a cook.
“There were few Marines during that time that didn’t go to Vietnam, except for me,” he said. “There were 77 of us in the platoon. When they gave out our assignments, 70 were picked for infantry and five of us were chosen as cooks.”

During his two years with the Corps, he served at the training center at Parris Island, then at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and aboard a ship in the Caribbean. He also spent time in Panama undergoing juggle training.

Early on, Palestina gained a reputation for his cooking.

Six weeks into his training, he was scheduled to make pizza for 1,200 men. “You have to follow Navy regulations and it said to use tomato soup, crushed tomato and cheddar cheese. I said, ‘You got to be kidding me?’”

After a phone call to his mother to double check ingredients, he made arrangements for someone to pick up a case of crushed tomatoes, a case of puree and mozzarella cheese. And he made pizza.
“The next thing you know the base commander calls me into his office. I was scared. He turns to me and says, ‘I understand you made the pizza. You understand you didn’t follow regulations?’ Then he turns to me and says, ‘That was the best f-ing pizza I’ve ever had.’ He gave me a four-day pass.”

Palestina quickly became known among the men for his willingness to bend regulations and cook to order, sometimes to the consternation of the other cooks on the line.

“If I fed you and you liked what I did, that gave me pleasure,” said Palestina. “The way I looked at it, half the guys I’m feeding are going to be dead in another two years and I should be making their lives better.”

Palestina never saw action, except from the inside of a mess hall. “I don’t know why I never went to Vietnam. I only know three people in the Marine Corps that I was associated with that didn’t go.”

Today, as Palestina looks back on Feb. 1, 1966 – the day he was drafted into the Marines – he considers it the best thing that ever happened to him.

“If I didn’t get drafted and I didn’t go into the Marine Corps, God knows if I would have been dead from an overdose or killed by the mob. What started out as a Marine Corps nightmare has become the proudest thing that I ever did.

“It changed my life. It made a man out of me. It gave me a respect for what our military does. And it gave me discipline.”

Following his service, he earned a degree in business administration from Temple University under the GI Bill and found a job as an insurance underwriter.

He met his future wife, Joan. They were married in 1969. “My wife is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

The couple moved out of the city to Northampton Township where they settled down and raised their family. They have two children, Melissa, of Warminster, and Peter Jr., at home, and two grandchildren, Matthew and Sean.

More recently, Palestina served on the Northampton Township Board of Supervisors from 1984 to 2007.

During his tenure on the board, he instituted the Northampton Patriots Flag Program to honor the men and women of the township serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The seeds of the program were planted seven years ago when Palestina and Council Rock School Board member Bernadette Heenan organized a ceremony honoring the troops at Northampton Commons. A flag representing each soldier was planted in the ground.

The flags were later brought inside the township building and placed in a handmade display. When a soldier returns home, their military flag is presented to the veteran during a public meeting and a U.S. flag is put in the display in place of the military flag.

“The toughest thing I ever had to do was three years ago,” said Palestina. “The parents of Bob Dembowski had asked about a flag for him. We put it in that Wednesday night at a supervisors’ meeting. The next day he was killed in action. I was stunned. It still chokes me up today.”

Today, 63 flags are on display, eight of them representing people who are still in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I can honestly say other than the birth of my kids there has been no greater pleasure,” Palestina told a reporter in 2007, of his involvement with the flag project. “Having been in the military myself, I know how important it is for people at home to appreciate what you are doing. It makes their life a little better when they are in harm’s way.”

Joseph F. Longmore

Former Northampton supervisor recalls The Cold War.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com


U.S. Army Spec. 5 Joseph F. Longmore, 76, of Northampton Township may have been stateside during his time in the service, but his experience in the military changed his life forever.

He did not travel to foreign countries. He did not fight any battles. Yet, being in the Army gave him a chance to hone his skills, and focus on taking charge and making changes.

Today, Longmore, a former Northampton Township supervisor, looks back at the time he was in the service during the Cold War which lasted from 1947 to 1991.

In 1950, he had been “called down” when he was still in high school at age 17. He graduated in 1951. That was during the Korean War. But, he was told to wait. The war was coming to the end.
Longmore served two years of active duty from 1956 to 1958, two years in the active reserves from 1958 to 1960 and two years inactive reserves from 1960 to 1962. The whole commitment was for six years.

Longmore was the only one of his group who went on to Fort Meade after basic training at Fort Dix. At Fort Meade, his job was electronic processing of information, which involved mainly the inventory systems for supplies. He dealt with the quantity of rifles and tanks around the world that were assigned to the 2nd Army.

They dealt with “all the things that an army needs. We created reports in the process that went up to people that made decisions,” Longmore said.

“We did the job,” he said. “We did what we were asked.”

And Longmore said he and his teammates changed procedures. “We made presentations to the lieutenant and the captain: ‘This is what we can do.’ And, they accepted,” he noted.

He described The Cold War as “a different kind of a war. You’re out there fighting as a young service person. You start to live with the danger and you start to accept it.”

There were two world powers – the Soviet Union and the United States. “We were trained in a lot of things. We had some exposure to what an atomic bomb would do in reality,” Longmore said.

“They were telling the kids in the homeland to go under their desks,” he said. “None of that was feasible when you see the destructive power of an atomic bomb.

“You recognize at that time you felt safe,” Longmore said. “We were the only ones that had it, but by the 60s and 70s, other people had it.”

He said that the attitudes differed from what they are today. “There was a lot more love of country.”

Longmore said President Ronald Reagan, who served two terms from 1981 to 1989, had the power to help bring the Cold War to a conclusion. He said it was “incredible” to see what happened between Russia and the United States, and to see the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Reagan, he said, was “a leader capable” of using the strength of the United States. “It sure looked like life would be better – absolutely – with the conservative view on things.”

When asked who his two favorite presidents are, Longmore said Reagan and George W. Bush. He said Reagan “loved America. He made you feel good about America…

“It was quite visible that Reagan believed in the heart of America and the good people that made it up and they understood what it meant to be free,” he said.

“Bush was willing to defend the country after we were attacked in 2001, trying to protect the country from a nuclear explosion in the United States,” Longmore said. “That’s still a huge threat in this country. It goes off the people’s radar screen.”

He recommends reading the book, “We Still Hold These Truths – Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future,” by Matthew Spalding, which is about the founding fathers and how their ideals still hold true.

He is critical of the current administration. He said the country is headed toward socialism. He fears that government is getting too big.

Longmore said that he enjoys freedom. “I grew up in a great America. I would like to think my grandkids would get the same feeling about America,” he said.

Longmore knows firsthand about public meetings and local government, having been a supervisor in Northampton Township from 1974 to 1980. He served when the area turned from agrarian to suburban.

Thirty years later, though Longmore no longer holds public office, he advocates people getting out and vote. “It is important for the people to understand the power of one vote, because if everyone votes you have a collective group that can change destiny.”

Looking back, he said, “The military service was one of the better things that happened in my life,” Longmore noted. He was single at the time of his service, and married Shirlee afterwards.
Shirlee and Joe have five sons and ten grandchildren. They moved to Holland in 1970. Longmore grew up in the Frankford section of Philadelphia.

Two of their sons were in the service, like their father. Joseph was in the U.S. Navy Seabees and Michael was in the U.S. Air Force.

All of their children graduated from Council Rock High School, which is now Council Rock North.

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