Public Relations - In The News

Serving again by sharing their stories
BY PHILIP MARCELO Journal Staff Writer

A film on six Rhode Island veterans who returned to Normandy 62 years after they particiapted in the D-Day invasion of Europe introduces a new generation to their courage and sacrifice.

WOONSOCKET -- Wilson Delasanta sat motionless while 900 people watched and listened to an account of the invasion of Normandy that was projected on the big screen at the Stadium Theater yesterday.

Delasanta, a Cumberland resident and one of six D-Day veterans from Rhode Island featured in the documentary, didn't shed a tear. He didn't say a word to his wife, sitting next to him.

The film, D-Day plus 62 Years: Rhode Island Veterans Return to Normandy, looks back at the invasion on June 6, 1944, through the eyes of a group of local veterans who visted Normandy in March.

Delasanta thought about all the times he had brushed off questions about his experiences in World War II.

When the movie was over, he echoed his words in the documentary: "I never said much about it because I didn't want to keep remembering it. The less I talk about it, the better it is."

Standing with his wife and his son's family yesterday, he knew the decades-long silence about D-Day was shattered.

"They really got it out of him," Ida Delasanta, his wife, said of the film crew. "All these years, he has never wanted to talk about the war. It was good in a way."

D-Day plus 62 Years premiered to the sold-out theater that included about 47 D-Day veterans and over 200 veterans from World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Gulf War, and their friends and family. The one-hour film is written and produced by Tim Gray, a former Channel 10 sports reporter.

In addition to Delasanta, Gray's film featured Richard Fazzio, of Woonsocket; Leo Heroux, of Central Falls; Frank Chomka, of Cumberland; and Christopher Heisler, of Wakefield, who all returned to Normandy for the documentary. Also interviewed in the film was veteran Philip O'Connell, of West Warwick.

Speakers included Francois Gauthier, consul general of France in Boston; William F. Hatfield, president of Bank of America, Rhode Island; and Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty.

The premiere's organizer, Eugene Peloquin, greeted veterans as they started to arrive at the theater at noon for the 2 p.m. showing.

He noted that in the two years since the city commemorated the opening of the World War II monument in Washington D.C., as many as 200 Rhode Island veterans have died.

Nationally, almost 1,500 war veterans die each day, and with them, go their memories of war, Peloquin said.

In the twilight of their lives, the soldiers of World War II are being called to serve their country once again.

This time, to remember.

But they have been slow to answer the call.

"There is always a reluctance to remember," Gray said.

Of the veterans he interviewed, "some were more emotional, some were more matter of fact. It was hard, but they held nothing back," he said. "You have to stress the importance of oral history, that each story gives a unique perspective and that any story of any veteran is important."

For Fazzio, a Navy officer assigned to pilot a boat onto Omaha Beach in the first wave of attack, the return to Normandy was liberating.

In the film, he breaks down in tears as he tells his story for the first time.

"I'm not too proud of having everyone see me cry," he said before the premiere.

But Gray said many veterans now understand that they must tell their stories while they still have the time.

"Many of them have been humble for so long. Now that they are dealing with their own mortality, they can understand what they did on a world scale," Gray said.

One World War II veteran who had come to see the documentary was Julian Mitchell, a retired master sergeant in the Army, who has been working on his war memoirs for more than 15 years. He said he hopes that other veterans begin to see the value of recording their memories.

Mitchell has recently begun visiting area elementary schools with other war veterans, telling of his tours of duty in Africa, Italy and Southern France.

"In every war story, parts are humorous, parts are tragic. But each carries on to younger generations how horrible war can be," Mitchell said.

At the end of the event, the vets who fought on D-Day gathered on stage for a photograph.

The six members of Wilson Delasanta's family waited in their seats near the front of the theater as he posed for the cameras.

Ten-year-old Michaela Delasanta was surprised to hear her grandfather's words in the film. "He didn't seem like the kind of guy who would get in front of a camera," she said.

Her grandmother said that when Michaela and her 8-year-old brother, Anthony, are able to undestand the cost of war, the voice of their grandfather will be there.

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