By: Helen Mooradkanian – June, 2014 Dr. Richard Mooradkanian, U.S. Army, 1953-1955, was my trusted military advisor who critiqued each “Hero of the Month” column I wrote before I sent it to press. For the past two-and-a-half years, his wisdom, counsel, and insight guided me in my columns for “The Valley Patriot.” When Richard passed […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – February, 2014 They called it “the Valley of Death”—the dreaded Hiep Duc Valley in Vietnam. The enemy’s stronghold. A major battleground. One where American units were nearly annihilated. Sergeant Dudley H. Farquhar, A Troop, 1/1st Cav, Americal Division (23d Infantry), as a member of Americal’s Reactionary Forces was sent in with […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – June, 2013 In that assault landing on Morotai, 45 LSTs (landing ship, tank) lined the shore. Offshore coral reefs and boulders caught landing craft. Troops, vehicles, and supplies were unloaded onto the beach—with no opposition from the 500 or more Japanese caught there by surprise. But […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – May 2013 In this Memorial Day issue, we honor a local WWII veteran who survived the brutality of the Japanese POW camps and the “Hell Ships.” Although he passed away February 3, 2013, shortly before his 93rd birthday, his story of courage and endurance lives on. *** Sergeant Victor Cote, […]
By Helen Mooradkanian – April 2013 The “island hopping” strategy in the Pacific had proved successful as the Marines secured one island after another in their advance toward the Japanese mainland: Roi and Namur in the Marshall Islands (February 1944), Los Negros (March 1944), Wake Island (May 1944), Saipan and Guam (July 1944), and Tinian […]
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 Morradkanian – February 2013 TEWKSBURY – When 6,000 Marines were trapped at their base during the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh—a surprise attack by 40,000 heavily armored North Vietnamese and Viet Cong during the infamous 1968 Tet Offensive —it was “the longest and deadliest battle” of the Vietnam War. West Point graduate Lieutenant […]
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 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 […]
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 […]