Naples Florida Weekly
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VETERANS DAY




 

MUCH OF WHAT THE public knows about the military and service members centers around battles reported in the news and then in history books, with the names listed typically being those of generals or the occasional soldier who performed some act of unusual bravery. This, however, does not truly capture the highly varied jobs and bureaucratic coordination that it actually takes to make the military function. It also doesn’t capture that for many veterans, military service was not a main career but simply one job among many in their highly varied lives that also included raising families, performing volunteer work and doing all of the other things any person might do. For Veterans Day 2020, Florida Weekly brings you the life stories of four people who just happen to have served in the military.

 ¦ Lou Massarone of Naples, 89; originally from New York

• Military service: Army 1951-1953 in
10th Corps attached to the 24th Infantry Division in Korea.
• Final rank: Corporal.
• Military job: Radio operator.

Growing up in the Hudson Valley, Lou Massarone spent some of his youth in the Berkshire Mountains. As a teenager, he caddied at a local golf course to help support his family after his father passed away, and he was drafted into the Army soon after graduating high school.

Much of what Mr. Massarone experienced in the military had to do with bureaucracy. In order to fight the Korean War, or any war, it takes the coordination of massive numbers of troops along with massive amounts of supplies and infrastructure work. After basic training, followed by radio operator training, he was first shipped to Seattle and then to Japan to await processing and be assigned to a unit. Processing included receiving inoculations, uniforms, equipment and a rifle, which needed its sights personally zeroed in for him to use. Then he boarded another boat to leave for Korea.

MASSARONE

MASSARONE

“Each day you were called out, and we were assigned to different outfits,” he said. “Then, they piled us in a truck. Again, it was just all processing. It was January and very, very cold, so they gave us winter clothes. After a couple of days there, they took us up to our outfit. And for the next couple of days, there was nothing but training — what I was going to do, where I was going to go and everything else.”

Mr. Massarone’s unit was sent to relieve National Guard troops who had initially been deployed to Korea. At first, he lived in a tent. But because his unit kept taking fire, the Army engineers built underground bunkers from big logs and sandbags for the troops to live in. The engineers also had to build other infrastructure for the troops.

“We were in nothing but mountains, and our engineers built the road,” he said. “That’s the only way you were able to travel because the North Koreans had all kinds of mines and you were told, time after time, ‘Stay on the areas the engineers have bulldozed.’”

In addition to operating the radio, Mr. Massarone’s duties included going out on patrols. This led to him receiving a Purple Heart.

“At times, things would quiet down for a couple of weeks, and we wouldn’t know what was going on,” he said, “and then, weeks later, they would bombard and try to overrun us. So, one night we went out on patrol, and we got ambushed with mortar rounds. That’s when I got wounded in my left arm and leg, and I lost my hearing completely for two days, so that’s what started my hearing loss.”

At left, Lou Massarone received the Purple Heart after being wounded during a patrol in the Korean War. He was a radio operator, right. COURTESY OF LOU MASSARONE

At left, Lou Massarone received the Purple Heart after being wounded during a patrol in the Korean War. He was a radio operator, right. COURTESY OF LOU MASSARONE

After the military, Mr. Massarone earned an associate degree in engineering from Marist College. He worked for IBM for 33 years, becoming an electrical engineer and eventually the assistant director for facilities. He was on the team that designed the IBM 360 mainframe computer. He married and had three children and six grandchildren. Retiring at the age of 54, he moved to Naples in 1989 after falling in love with the town during a spring break visit.

Ralph Santillo served in the New Jersey Army National Guard while he was in high school. Ralph Santillo now serves as the president of the Invest in America’s Veterans Foundation and its Southwest Florida Military Museum. PHOTOS COURTESY OF RALPH SANTILLO

Ralph Santillo served in the New Jersey Army National Guard while he was in high school. Ralph Santillo now serves as the president of the Invest in America’s Veterans Foundation and its Southwest Florida Military Museum. PHOTOS COURTESY OF RALPH SANTILLO

“I feel that, when I went to the service, I felt more sure of myself,” he said, “that, if I can do this, I can do anything.”

¦ Ralph Santillo of Cape Coral, 80; originally from New Jersey

• Military service: New Jersey Army • 
National Guard 1955-1961 in the 50th
Armored Division Tank Corps.
• Final rank: Specialist 2nd class.
• Military job: Field medic.

Mr. Santillo was 15 years old and still in high school when he decided to volunteer for military service. He had grown up revering his seven uncles, who were World War II veterans, and he didn’t let his youth stop him from signing up.

SANTILLO

SANTILLO

“I was fortunate that I had a World War II uncle who was the first sergeant in the (National Guard’s) headquarters company, so when the second lieutenant asked for my birth certificate, I said, ‘I didn’t realize I needed to bring it,’” Mr. Santillo said. “Of course, my uncle said, ‘I’ll vouch for him — he’s 17.’ The second lieutenant was a young guy who looked up to my uncle because he was a decorated combat veteran, and nobody ever questioned those guys back then. So, there were no questions asked, and the lieutenant was very happy that he was getting a candidate to sign up.”

His uncle made sure Mr. Santillo received assignment to the medical detachment. His primary job was to keep records of the inoculations that the thousands of soldiers in the entire battalion received. His first year at Guard summer camp, he was assigned to drive the company commander up to Fort Drum, N.Y., about 300 miles away. Since his father owned a trucking company, Mr. Santillo fortunately had learned how to drive trucks when he was 11 years old. As for his lack of a New Jersey driver’s license, he didn’t worry about it because who would stop a military jeep to ask a young man in uniform for his license while he was chauffeuring the commander? Since his National Guard unit was a tank division, he also occasionally had the chance to get into the driver’s seat of one of the big machines.

 

“It was great because I was a young kid playing soldier, and I got to drive a tank,” he said. “By the time I was 17, I really was driving a tank. Every once in a while, the guys would let us jump in and let us do that.”

Mr. Santillo also served as an ambulance driver, which entailed running out to pick up soldiers who had injured themselves while training during the Guard’s summer camp.

“My main battle experience, if you want to call it that, was when I was called to help a National Guard soldier who had cut his thumb off,” he said. “Turned out that he was a World War II veteran who was training new communications recruits, and he was going to be this big shot who showed them how to splice wire with an ax. So, he cut most of his thumb off, and my whole deal at that point was I got to tape his thumb back on, wrap it up, put him in the ambulance and take him to the hospital. I’ll always remember that because he was trying to show off.”

PRIDEMORE

PRIDEMORE

Mr. Santillo continued his studies in high school while serving in the National Guard, as well as working a soda jerk job after school and working for his father’s company during the summers. He even talked some school buddies into joining the Guard — once they reached the proper age of 17. He considered continuing once he reached the end of his six-year enlistment, but by that time he had married his high school sweetheart and had a second child on the way.

“I was right between Korea and Vietnam,” he said. “I probably would have made a career out of the service and was going to sign up for permanent duty, but Vietnam was starting to heat up, so I thought better of it. Had I stayed in, I would have had to do at least a year of active duty and probably would have ended up in Vietnam. It was a short, six-year career, but it was fun. I would recommend it to any young person that’s still in high school, even, to sign up for the Reserve or the Guard. It’s a great experience, and it actually gives you an opportunity to go into active duty if you want to from there and get some points because you can go in with some rank.”

Carl Pridemore volunteered for the Air Force in 1953. He retired from the military to West Palm Beach. COURTESY OF CARL PRIDEMORE

Carl Pridemore volunteered for the Air Force in 1953. He retired from the military to West Palm Beach. COURTESY OF CARL PRIDEMORE

Mr. Santillo spent most of his adult life as an entrepreneur, operating a number of businesses in the clothing, restaurant and real estate sectors. He moved to Florida while he was in the real estate developing and modular home business in the Poconos. A snowstorm stranded a new $70,000 piece of excavating equipment in the woods for eight weeks. Meanwhile, he had been chatting by phone with a friend in Fort Myers who said it was 82 degrees and sunny in Florida.  

“I’ve had it,” he said. “I’m going down there, and let’s see what the opportunities are down there.”

Mr. Santillo started in the real estate business upon arriving in Fort Myers in 1988, weathering the ups and downs until the housing market collapsed in 2007. At that point, he decided to retire. He then applied his entrepreneurial expertise to help the veterans he so revered. In 2009, he started the Invest in America’s Veterans Foundation to provide services to veterans such as help navigating veterans’ benefits; finding employment, housing and food; and coordinating addictions counseling. In the nonprofit’s original storefront on Del Prado Boulevard in Cape Coral, he hung up his National Guard photo and his son’s military uniform. This accidentally planted the seeds for the foundation to add the Southwest Florida Military Museum to its roster of initiatives because those two artifacts hung as decorations attracted the donation of so many other military artifacts that it inundated the small storefront.

AKINS

AKINS

The museum and foundation recently lost the former grocery store it had moved to in Cape Coral, adding yet another new chapter to Mr. Santillo’s life. The museum and its gift shop were offered a generous deal on a shop space in the Edison Mall in Fort Myers. He said he is hoping to get that new space opened on Veterans’ Day. The mall space, however, didn’t have enough room to also house the foundation’s veterans’ services. He continues his search for a place in Cape Coral to resume offering those services, probably out of a small storefront again. However, he also has a vision for what the foundation could become.

“There’s a tremendous need for veterans housing, so I’m working with a group right now that’s considering a plant to build modular homes here,” he said, “and I’m trying to find a potential partner to start building a veterans’ village where we could not only help veterans with an onsite facility for their problems but get them into housing, and the plant would provide jobs.”

Mr. Santillo is still married to his high school sweetheart and has three children, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

¦ Carl Pridemore of West Palm Beach, 85; originally from South Carolina

• Military service: Air Force 1953-1973
in the U.S., Japan, Philippines, Okinawa,
Thailand and Vietnam.
• Final rank: Tech sergeant E6.
• Military jobs: Administrative clerk,
postal worker, general’s secretary and
club steward.

Bill Akins stands in front of a tent during his service with the Army. COURTESY OF BILL AKINS

Bill Akins stands in front of a tent during his service with the Army. COURTESY OF BILL AKINS

Carl Pridemore is an example of a vet who joined the military and decided to stay in long enough to retire. Growing up in the country as one of 11 children, his family didn’t farm for a living, but they raised their own vegetables, dairy cattle and hogs. After graduating high school, Mr. Pridemore married for the first time as well as volunteered for the Air Force so he could choose his branch of service rather than be drafted.

“I don’t think anyone ever intends to stay 20 years when they go in,” he said. “Circumstances usually dictate that. About the time it came around for me to re-enlist or get out, I’d already had three or four kids and no chance of any job outside at that moment. So, like a lot of people, I wanted food on the table, so I re-enlisted. Then, once that was out of the way, I almost had too many years to give away then and come out with four kids to start making a living on the outside, so you stay with what you do.”

Mr. Pridemore’s service career highlights the fact that it takes far more than soldiers with weapons to make the military function. Upon entering the military, he took the military’s battery of aptitude and placement testing; the outcome determined the self-described “country boy” was suited to administrative work.

“They said, ‘This man is a clerk,’” he said. “Well, I couldn’t even type!”

However, the military taught him how to type as well as how to take shorthand dictation. This led him to positions first as an administrative clerk and then to the military’s postal service. After all, somebody has to see to delivering all of those care packages from home as well as getting service members’ letters back to their families and loved ones, and the civilian U.S. Postal Service does not send their postal carriers into war zones to provide this service.

“We did exactly the same job that was done in a civilian post office, except that we wore a military uniform,” he said. “We had the same rule books and everything.”

Mr. Pridemore’s ability with shorthand, typing and administrative tasks attracted the attention of a general who was in need of a new secretary. General Albert P. Clark flew from Okinawa to the Philippines to interview him for the secretarial position. However, with four children and a wife to feed, in addition to serving as the general’s secretary, Mr. Pridemore also began moonlighting part-time at the officers and NCO clubs.

“That’s how most of the clubs got their bartenders — part-time GIs who needed more income for their families — and waitresses were GI wives,” he said. “If it weren’t for the clubs, we’d have starved back in the early days.”

This extra work led him to his next job in the military, as a club steward. Work in the hospitality field seems about as far removed from the military’s mission of combat readiness as can be imagined, but base officers and NCO clubs provide a vital function in the military. This could even be considered reflected in the equivalent establishments in towns throughout the U.S., such as the Legion and VFW halls with bars and kitchens that serve as social clubs for veterans. Working as a club steward meant being prepared to do anything from stepping in to bartend to scrubbing toilets to serving as emcee of the floorshow to taking inventory — lots and lots of inventory.

“One of the biggest jobs that a club steward does is inventory,” he said. “That’s a daily deal. Every morning you went in early and inventoried it before you opened because it took most of the day.”

His experience as a club steward led him to manage country clubs once he left the military, but the hours were long, and his second wife wanted to see more of him.

“A lot of my civilian work was an extension of what I learned in the military,” he said. “The money was good, but the reason I didn’t keep it up at the country clubs was it took almost all your waking hours.”

He and his wife started an arts and crafts store together, where he worked as a picture framer. He was successful, but the couple wasn’t making that much money at the business. So, Mr. Pridemore decided to use his military experience and put on a uniform once more — this time a U.S. Postal Service uniform. He retired in 2007, and then moved to Florida in 2015 after his wife died so that he could be close to his three surviving children, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He still drives himself back to South Carolina about once a year to visit his extended stepfamily from his second marriage.

“I enjoyed my 20 years in the service,” he said, “and I don’t have a bad thing to say about the Air Force.”

¦ Bill Akins of Port Charlotte, 71; originally from Arizona

• Military service: Army 1966-1976 in Germany; the 1st Infantry Division, 4th Infantry
Division, 23rd Infantry Division and 196th
Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam; Field
Artillery Board at Fort Sill, Okla.
• Final rank: Sergeant.
• Military jobs: Artillery gun crew, fire
direction controller, forward observer
and computerized field artillery developmental team.

Born in Arizona but growing up all over the Southwest because of his father’s work, Bill Akins volunteered for the Army at the age of 17, after graduating high school. His first assignment was with a field artillery unit in Germany, constantly doing field training or preparing for inspections out in the cold and snow during the Cold War. Although he was not in active combat, he described the situation as being constantly on alert. Then, in a little-known response to the outbreak of the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab countries in the Middle East, the U.S. military made preparations in case the conflict escalated and the Soviet Union became involved.

“We actually were alerted and went to the railheads and were ready to go,” Mr. Akins said. “Fortunately, we didn’t have to, but it was just that the era (was one) where there was a lot of tension building around the world.”

Mr. Akins then applied for a transfer to Vietnam in preference to remaining stationed in Germany. He arrived three weeks before the Tet Offensive.

“So, here I was,” he said, “thinking, ‘What the heck did I do now?’”

He served in an artillery unit, first on a gun crew and then in calculating fire direction control. He eventually volunteered to become a forward observer since there was a shortage of soldiers for that position, a job that put him in front of the fighting or in a helicopter over the fighting so he could see where artillery and airstrikes were needed and radio that information back.

“As forward observers, we had a big target on our backs because they didn’t like us,” Mr. Akins said.

He was reassigned to Fort Sill, Okla., in 1972 to serve on a team with a military contractor based on his experience working in both fire direction and forward observing. The team developed a system to bring field artillery into the computer age.

“We started off with a drawing on a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood and took it all the way ‘till we tested it in the field, and the Army bought it,” he said.

After 10 years in the military, Mr. Akins started a career in retail management in the Dallas area and later started a transportation middleman business where he arranged truck transportation for his customers’ goods. In 2008, between the Great Recession closing many of his customers’ businesses and an occurrence of Agent Orange-related health problems, he retired. He initially moved to the Florida panhandle to be close to his son and four grandchildren. Then he relocated to Charlotte County, where he spearheaded the effort and fundraising to erect the half-scale Vietnam Memorial Wall in Punta Gorda. Now he has organized the Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans 2020 event with country singer Lee Greenwood that will take place on Nov. 21 at Charlotte Sports Park.

“The biggest welcome home that the Vietnam veterans got was from each other,” Mr. Akins said, “and they were just doing their jobs but were treated terribly. Truth is, we probably should never have been there, but we were and did what we were supposed to do, and so here we are.” ¦

In the KNOW

» Southwest Florida Military
Museum / Invest in America’s
Veterans Foundation
4125 Cleveland Ave., Fort Myers
239-541-8704
www.swflmm.org

» Welcome Home
Vietnam Vets 2020
Events scheduled Monday, Nov. 16
through Saturday, Nov. 21
Locations in Punta Gorda
and Port Charlotte
www.welcomehomevietnamvets2020.org

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