ALL PHOTOS (C) COPYRIGHT RON MUSHOW PHOTOGRAPHY & THE VALLEY PATRIOT (PHOTO GALLERY) More than 400 people tuned out Friday night to attend the Valley Patriot 9th Anniversary BASH where the editors of the monthly newspaper (Tom Duggan, Dr. Charles Ormsby and Ralph Wilbur) honored police officers, firefighters, veterans, and those who […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – January 2013 LAWRENCE – It was early 1961 during the Cold War. The United States had just closed its embassy in Havana, Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis would not come to a head until one year later, in October 1962—the closest the U.S. and the Soviet Union ever came to […]
HERO IN OUR MIDST By: Helen Mooradkanian – October, 2012 One month before his 21st birthday, lst Lieutenant Angelo Giambusso, U.S. Army Air Force, North Andover, Mass., had flown five extremely hazardous combat missions—into Hitler’s oil fields in Ploesti, Romania—plus another 40 strategic bombing attacks in 10 countries across Europe. Yet nothing compared to the […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – September, 2012 Corporal Philip Cote, U.S. Army Air Force—who will celebrate his 96th birthday on October 31—was an eyewitness to history on Tinian Island in the Pacific during World War II. Raised in a log cabin in Tewksbury, Mass., and now living in Dracut, he witnessed two […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – August, 2012 On March 3, 1945, in Italy’s northern Apennines, storm clouds gathered as Private Samuel L. Blumenfeld, now of Littleton, Mass., first entered combat in WWII with the 10th Mountain Division, Field Artillery Battalion. For one born and raised in New York City, mountain […]
VALLEY PATRIOTS OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – April, 2012 When 25-year-old Corporal George A. (Tony) Lutz, II, U.S. Army, of Virginia Beach, VA, was killed by a sniper’s bullet outside Fallujah on December 29, 2005, only six weeks into his deployment in “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” his tragic death set in motion a […]
Helen Mooradkanian – March, 2012 Colonel Kris Mineau, USAF (Ret.), of North Reading, flew 100 combat missions into North Vietnam in 1966 as fighter pilot in the supersonic F-4C Phantom II. Capable of speed Mach 2.23, more than twice the speed of sound, the Phantom was key to downing the Soviet MiG-21s used by the […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH READ PART I By: Helen Mooradkanian – October, 2011 Last month we described the miraculous escape of downed airman, John Katsaros, USAAF, of Haverhill, whose life was saved during WWII by the French Resistance. Smuggled out of Nazi-occupied France in a 3-month, 3,000-mile escape, he gathered strategic intelligence used […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – September, 2011 Out of the darkness, engines roaring, hundreds of American B-17 Flying Fortresses took off March 20, 1944, in World War II, from Deenethorpe, England. Destination: Frankfurt. Mission: destroy production of dreaded Luftwaffe FW-190 fighter planes. At 30,000 feet, under heavily overcast skies and […]
By: Helen Mooradanian – August, 2011 In May 1944 during World War II, near Carano, Italy, 24-year old Sergeant Van T. Barfoot risked his life in extraordinary heroism. Single-handedly, he killed seven German soldiers, destroyed three machinegun nests, faced down three armored tanks, and captured 17 German prisoners! For his valor, he was commissioned […]