Valley Patriot of the Month By: Ted Tripp – May, 2007 CONCORD/ANDOVER – Tom Hudner was sitting in the commons area after lunch at Phillips Academy in Andover when word spread that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. As with most young people of the era, he had no idea where Pearl Harbor was […]
Valley Patriot of the Month PART 2 By: By Ted Tripp April, 2007 (read part 1) METHUEN – It was late in the summer of 1943 and Tom Petrillo was a shell loader on one of the twenty 5″ guns onboard the battleship USS Massachusetts. After serving 16 months on Big Mamie, and having […]