Public Employee Press

Fighting historical amnesia
Joe Garofalo’s war museum

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Retiree and lifelong Bronx resident Joe Garofalo, 87, is on a mission.

He is the curator and a founder of the Bronx Military Museum, a permanent exhibit in a funeral home in the Morris Park neighborhood. The museum is a project of a local veterans’ group he established and a handful of other area vets.

“This is a way of honoring people who served their country and making sure their sacrifice isn’t forgotten,” Garofalo said.

Members of the American VeteranMemorial Association (AVMA) are working to expand the wartime memorabilia collection, establish a virtual museum on the Web and enlarge their membership.

Besides paying tribute to veterans, Garofalo said he was motivated to set up the museum because of his concern about the country’s historical amnesia. “We have visited schools and found out that the kids really aren’t aware of World War II,” he said.

Garofalo, a former city building inspector and member of Local 375, started the project several years ago. After a long search for space, the mini-museum found a home in the lobby of the John Dormi & Sons Funeral Home, whose manager, Chris DiCostanzo, is a Vietnam veteran.

A treasure trove of military items is in two display cases purchased by the veterans. There are dog tags, hand grenades, Japanese and German helmets, medals, bayonets, swords, and a knife made from the propeller of a kamikaze suicide plane. Garofalo obtained a lot of the memorabilia at auctions and through donations.

Adorning the wall are Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine uniforms and numerous military patches and insignia.

Four binders atop the cases include photos and documents donated by veterans and families from the neighborhood. One of the photos is of Garofalo’s father, Francesco, a World War I veteran of the renowned “Lost Battalion.” In the war’s last major battle, the heroic unit of 554 men was trapped behind enemy lines in the Argonne Forest in France but fought on and refused to surrender. Only 194 walked out. The battalion’s story was later made into a movie.

The exhibit also includes replicas of warplanes. One is a model of the Vought F4U Corsair fighter, the plane flown by the famed World War II ace pilot Gregory (Pappy) Boyington.

Garofalo enlisted in the Navy in 1942, and he served in the South Pacific until theend of the war as a member of the construction battalions, or CBs, more commonly known as Seabees.

Garofalo recounted his wartime experience in an article in the December 2008 issue of the magazine America in World War II.

World War II horrors
He faced combat, including a harrowing incident in which a Japanese soldier clad only in a jock strap and wearing a helmet rushed toward him after pulling the pin out of a grenade. Garolfalo was saved when the soldier was gunned down and fell on top of the grenade. Later that afternoon, he came under fire as he was taking the wounded back to his base. He escaped with his life when a Marine shot the Japanese machine gunner.

Though at the time he didn’t know its ultimate use, Garofalo’s 121st Seabees helped build the island airport used by the B-29 bombers that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Erik O’Brien, a member of American Museum of Natural History Local 1559, hooked up with the veterans group after reading about it in a local newspaper.

“I said, ‘Oh wow, this is only a few blocks away from me,’ ” said O’Brien, a World War II buff, when he read about the museum shortly after moving into the neighborhood a year ago. With their DC 37 connection and shared love of military history, O’Brien and Garofalo struck up a friendship. Though not a veteran, O’Brien, 37, joined AVMA.

“Joe has asked me to help out, and I am happy to contribute to this project,” O’Brien said. “One of the points here is to educate the local public.

“A lot of the kids do not know about our history and they are not teaching it in the schools. I have read a ton of books about Hiroshima and other military subjects. But the veterans in this neighborhood — they are living history.”

For further information or to make a donation to the museum, call 914-512-7418 or 914-434-8900 or e-mail mokusatsu1123@yahoo.com orcarlos.blanco@inbox.com.