IN MEMORIAM 2025
J. HENRY ZANZALARI, RC ‘47
Dr. Zanzalari recalls his reaction to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor, I happened to be home at that time with my father and mother. They were driving me back to the school that night and we heard when Pearl Harbor was bombed. My first reaction was, "Where's Pearl Harbor? What is Pearl Harbor?" I remember, the day after Pearl Harbor, we were having lunch at the fraternity. Ron Jarvis, as president, we all stood up and he said, I can always remember that, "After today, we probably will not ever be together again like this." We sang Auld Lang Sine, and then, we held each others' hands, right around the table. It was very, very solemn. Sure enough, the way it turned out, we had several men killed from our fraternity.
ALVIN FAGAN
Mr. Fagan shares how he entered the US Army.
As I remember, I reported in. When I left my home on that day, my mother was terribly upset. She was on her knees; now, her second son was going. It was hard, but I did not look back. I just couldn't look back. They swore me in with a number of other men. I remember one of the drill sergeants came over to me and he asked me, after I was given this oath of allegiance to the Constitution, what service I would like to be drafted into. I told him, "I'd like to go into the Navy," but he says, "Buddy, you're in the Army now."
ADA BLOOM, NJC ‘41
Mrs. Bloom describes what it was like to join the Office of War Information.
People in my field were really sought after at that time, because there were very few of us who were professional librarians who also trained as film librarians. One of the divisions of the Office of War Information was their overseas motion picture division. It was not stationed overseas, but they handled the overseas distribution and production of films for overseas. They were looking for someone to establish their film library. They were very anxious to have me and it took a long time, because the agency wasn't even totally established yet. Then, of course, I had to be cleared and everything. Not that the work was that confidential, but, during the war, I guess, anybody who worked for the government had to have a good, clean record.
ANDRE BEAUMONT
Mr. Beaumont, a radioman, recalls a close call while fighting the Germans.
The Lieutenant, the exec officer, comes over and says, "Beaumont, get the radio. We're going for a walk." We walked way ahead of where our company was and we were obviously somewhere behind the German lines. He wanted to get an elevation where he could see across the canal, because there were the eighty-eights [that] were shooting at us with antipersonnel shells. Finally, we found a farmhouse and we crawled up to the attic. He told me, "Okay, start transmitting information, where these guys are," and I couldn't transmit. So, I had to take my short antenna off and put on my six-foot antenna and stick it out the window. I started to transmit when, obviously, some guy over there spotted us and they started shooting eighty-eights at us. The damn thing hit the house and we just threw ourselves down the stairs and ran out of that damn house. Within a couple of minutes, that damn house was not standing, but it was a crazy episode. Thank God; really, I took the radio off, I threw it down the stairs. He went down head first. I think I went down feet first, "Vroom."
CHARLES HARMON
Dr. Harmon relays his experience as a rifleman during the Battle of the Bulge.
I can tell you exactly the first time the classic movie bullet pinged off the stone window sill from which I was shooting. It was during the Battle of the Bulge. We were the outpost and we were told, "Hold that farm hilltop, period, hold it." So every morning, the Germans would attack just before dawn. It was snowy, so you could hear them coming from miles and you could see them against the snow. The poor guys would get up to the crest, where we could really see them, and they'd all die out there, the ones who didn't run away. We had three tanks with us and they'd open up with their machine guns and unlimited amounts of ammunition, you know, this machine gun fire everywhere. These guys would still come on. I shot one guy there at about seventy-five yards, that's how close he got, and he had a burp gun.
CLIFFORD ELLIS, ENG ‘58
Mr. Ellis recalls growing up next to Camp Kilmer during the war.
We lived right opposite Camp Kilmer. ... The guardhouse was nearby and I remember going up Sutton Lane to the USO [United Service Organizations] building. I remember seeing some of the soldiers, some prisoners of war that would escape and go through our fields and be captured by MPs [military police]. We were all concerned when that was happened. Luckily, there was no fire and gunshots or anything like that. Everything was okay.
EDWARD LAFFEY
Mr. Laffey portrays his antisubmarine service aboard a PB2Y Flying Boat.
I crossed the Equator twenty-six times and it looks like I had about 1,060 hours in the PB2Ys. You'd go out on patrol, depending upon where you were and what your duties were that day. The longest I flew was 14.6 hours in the air, from takeoff to landing. We would patrol from areas towards Jamaica out towards the eastern edge of the Caribbean, down and around, looking for German submarines. Now, when you're looking for submarines, you were flying at a very low altitude, maybe eight hundred feet, because what you're looking for is the wake of a periscope. In the daytime, you would never see a submarine on the surface. You'd only see them on the surface at night, because, at night, they were running their diesels [engines], charging their batteries, and, in daytime, they were running on batteries.
PHILIP SCHREIBER, R-N ‘56
Mr. Schreiber describes the Battle of Anguar Island in the Pacific Theater.
Angaur Island, September 15th, it's always in my mind. September 15th, we landed at Angaur Island. We've been told (and brainwashed through the movies, the media) that the Japs don't know what the hell they're doing. They wore thick glasses; all they knew how to do is make cheap toys out of old tin cans, inept. They were little, they were bowlegged, because you saw the Fu Manchu movies. We were attacked by Imperial Marines, who made our Marines look like midgets. I'm not kidding. They got right up to the ship there, where the ramp comes down and the tank comes out. They were all killed, but it was a battle. They were big.
ROBERT POPE, RC ‘49
Mr. Pope explains how he and a friend made their way back to American lines after escaping imprisonment as POWS.
They'd get reports on the radio in the farmhouses of what was happening, that the Battle of the Bulge was over and the Americans were moving quite rapidly through Germany towards the Russians. They knew that the end was inevitable; they just didn't know when it would be over for them. To give you an indication of the attitude, when the two of us were going down this road towards the Americans, we came to a fork in the road. There was a farmhouse in the middle of the fork and on the porch was a German soldier necking away with a fraulein. We stood there for a couple of minutes; "Should we ask him which way?" Finally, we hollered to him, "Which way, Americano?" He didn't even stop what he was doing. He just pointed to the right, and so, it was the right road.
SYDNEY GRANETZ, RC ‘48
Mr. Granetz describes coming home from the Korean War.
I started as a second lieutenant and I was promoted to first lieutenant there in Korea. To induce me to stay on, they offered me a captaincy, but I said, "I'm out of here." Then, they sent me on that thirty-one day slow boat to China. Edwin D. Patrick was the name of the ship; I'll never forget that name. I was seasick; I can't stand that type of motion. I can remember one of the fellows that I came with took a picture of me coming down the gangplank. He says, "I couldn't tell the difference between you and the gangplank, you were so thin," and I've never been that thin since.
ARTHUR SNYDER, RC ‘51
Mr. Snyder recalls flying bombing missions at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
The French were in trouble. They were being beaten by the Vietnamese. We were sent there to try to help support them. We would do bombing missions, strafing and napalm, in support to the French troops. That is why we were there. You soon got to know that the French did not fight like the Americans did in Korea. You didn't have much of a desire to take a chance being shot down when the French weren't, in our opinion, doing their share. They were collapsing. We were confined, basically, to the base there.
SUE PITT ANDERSON, DC ‘73
Ms. Pitt Anderson describes the 1964 Olympic Trials.
It was in Astoria, Queens. I think it was a public pool. The fact that we held these meets in places that were probably public pools was crazy. The '64 Olympics Trials in a lot of sports were in New York to coincide with the New York World's Fair in '64. Because it was within driving distance, a lot of my teammates went. In 1964, there were still limited events for women in the Olympics. My only shot at making the team was to try to make it in the 100-meter butterfly. I was fourth, which meant I knew I made the team when I got fourth, but I was a relay alternate, which meant that, in Tokyo, I would swim in the morning in the qualifying heats of the 400-medley relay. It was exciting. I mean, I made it. We didn't get to go home. We were taken right from there to staging in New York. Then, we went to LA and stayed there for a month to train. Then, we flew to Tokyo.
ROGER KIRSCHEN, RC ‘65
Mr. Kirschen recalls making the Rutgers Campus aware of Civil Rights activist Don Harris’ imprisonment in Georgia.
My roommate was Don Harris, an African-American guy who got involved in Civil Rights and actually got arrested once, too, down South. He was in jail. I remember that we got a notice out and we passed it out to all the people who came to the Princeton-Rutgers game. I guess it was '61 and, basically, making people aware of what had happened and that he should be supported and to do anything you could to make sure that he got out of jail. In terms of discussions of what was going on and what was faced, the fact that these are exceptionally brave people, to venture down South, knowing what was going to face them, could be anything from death to terrible beatings. Some would be oblivious to it, I think. Once again, there was like an awakening up for all of America, thinking that things were fine in the North and the problem's down South. Well, that's not the case, obviously.
RICHARD PLECHNER, RC ‘54
Judge Plechner recalls his work with the Republican Party in the 1960s.
I was a participant in the Sharon meeting, which founded Young Americans for Freedom, YAF. I was up at Bill Buckley's estate in Sharon, Connecticut, and met a lot of important people there. That was really the beginning impetus for the Goldwater Campaign--at that time, "Goldwater for Vice-President." I was very active in that It's a college group, college and young people's group, and I was active. I became a national director of that, one of the national board members, board of directors. I met a lot of very interesting people, not the least of which was Goldwater, of course, himself.
ROBERT ARBASETTI
Mr. Arbasetti explains how he felt upon learning he would be going to Vietnam from Germany.
In our society, guys are always looking for ways to prove themselves to be a man. So, there was always a curiosity, "Well, can I survive all this?" We were getting a lot of guys coming to our unit who were from Vietnam; they had a couple of years to serve. It was sort of like listening to somebody tell me a story about something that happened in medieval times. I didn't think that I can relate to that, but these guys had some pretty good insights about how to take a building, how to use a grenade launcher because they used it. In a strange way, it was exciting. I was going to go to this place where everybody is looking at. I was frightened because I didn't know what to expect and I didn't want to get hurt or killed. It's a whole combination of that.
GERALD PERSELAY, RC ‘49
Dr. Perselay discusses his duty as R&R officer at MACV during the Vietnam War.
I was very fortunate, because I ended up as chief of what they called the R&R branch, rest and recreation. I was assigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, in Saigon. That's a combined command, but, primarily, Army. When people used to see me in uniform, in my fatigues that said "Air Force," they'd say, "What are you doing here? You're not Army." Anyway, it was something else, because we provided rest and recreation for 550,000 troops in-country. That meant a trip outside country for any place from four to seven days, something like that. There were ten different sites. Only one site was in the United States. That was in Honolulu, and that was maintained for married people, so that wives could fly to Honolulu, meet their husbands there, spend a week.
RICHARD O. FIMMEL, RC ‘49
Mr. Fimmel reveals why the Pioneer spacecraft got to Saturn first.
I recall times like when we did our first Jupiter flyby. There is an intense radiation belt around Jupiter, and we were concerned about what would happen to the instruments from being subjected to this intense radiation. We were told by NASA headquarters not to go on to Saturn, because they wanted Voyager to be the first spacecraft to go to Saturn, but our project manager and I decided that we're going to make a little mistake and target it so that, from the swing by Jupiter, it would automatically go to Saturn, and it did. [laughter] "Oops, sorry about that." [laughter] So, we were the first to get to Saturn also.
Thanks to our undergraduate staff members at the Rutgers Oral History Archives and our recent ROHA graduates, who, fortunately for us, graciously continue to give their time and their dedicated service to our mission by participating in the Annual Memorial Service of the Rutgers Living History Society.
Special thanks to Rutgers Special Collections & University Archives for many of the images used in this presentation. We are especially grateful to all of the families of our departed members for supplying photographs and other materials for the memorial video.