Allan Appel Photo
Salerno by the new plaque with niece Mary Ellen Collins and great-nephew Matthew Collins.
As Fair Haven School second graders, some wearing Muslim headscarves, put their hands over their hearts and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, Korean War vet Charlie Salerno recalled Friday morning how on this very same stage in a school musical long ago he nervously sang “Old Man River.”
Make that precisely back in 1944, when five Salerno older brothers, graduates of the Fair Haven School, were also all already serving in the American military across the globe.
In all, a roomful of descendants of Donato and Maria Grazia Salerno, who settled in Fair Haven in 1905, were present in the school Friday morning. They joined hundreds of kids, school officials, and veterans’ organizations representatives to mark Sunday’s upcoming Veterans’ Day.
The occasion was the dedication of a permanent plaque affixed to the wall of the entryway lobby that hails the contribution of the six Salerno brothers to the securing of freedom during World War Two and and the Korean conflict.
The youngest of the siblings, Salerno was too young to serve in World War Two. But he did serve as a radio man in Korea in the early 1950s.
“As terrible as war is,” he reflected, “the people [there] are no different from us.”
Fair Haven School students, across the generations, sing “This Land Is Your Land … This Land Is My Land.”
Both Salerno and all G.I. his brothers — John, George, Daniel, Francis, and Jack — returned home safely. Salerno became a carpenter and a homebuilder and still lives in an 1830s house looking over the river in Fair Haven.
Charlie recalled one memory: shipping home from Seoul. The country was so war torn that a young woman was taking care of four or five kids, all likely orphans, by scavenging food from outside the G.I.s’ barracks. “She was picking up garbage to feed the kids,” Salerno recalled.
When he was leaving the country, after a recent R & R, and had a hundred dollars left in his pocket, he decided to give all the money to her to feed the kids.
When he handed her the bills, she said she wanted to fall down and kiss his feet, he recalled. “No, I should kiss your feet,” he responded. “She was like a Mother Teresa.”
Salerno, in Busan, Korea, where he recalled seeing bodies floating by in the river.
Instrumental in celebrating the Salerno family in Fair Haven and their military service was longtime and now retired Augusta Lewis Troup teacher Mary Ellen Collins, Charlie Salerno’s niece. Several months ago she made the proposal in a presentation to the Board of Ed about the plaque, which was largely privately funded, with contributions also from the board.
“You’ve heard the Board of Ed doesn’t agree on everything,” said schools’ Chief Operating Officer Will Clark, who represented the central office at Friday’s event. “But we were so moved, on this one we did.” That very night, Clark recalled, the board approved the idea of a plaque and placing it in the Fair Haven school that so many of the Salernos had attended.
With nephew Michael Santarcangelo, and a family photo.
During patriotic songs and ceremonies in the auditorium, Fair Haven School Principal Heriberto Cordero said, “We are so proud. We have American heroes who graduated from Fair Haven School.”
Clark put it a little differently to the attentive kids and their teachers: “This [ family is just like you, ordinary people. But when it came time to do something extraordinary,” they stepped up and did what was needed.
That service won us the freedom we have today, reflected in this school that’s open to students from many different nations.
“And all of you can be extraordinary” too in this way,” Clark continued. “I look forward to seeing the world you’ll create.”
The Salernos.
Salerno’s great-nephew Matthew Collins said that on the home front, his grandmother and the women in the family all prayed for their welfare and safety in front of an array of all the photographs of the fighting Salerno G.I.s.
That’s our American story, he told the kids. “Your story starts here.”
After the unveling of the plaque, coffee was served in the lobby. Then Salerno said he would be treating his entire clan to an early lunch at Modern Apizza on State Street.
Charlie is my neighbor and he often plays his banjo at our local events.
My grandmother had her 3 sons in WWII and they all returned too. <br /> I look forward to a time when no mother's child goes to war.