Bristolian finds new calling after Naval discharge.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com


One of the most impressive things about many of the veterans profiled on this page over the past years is the fact that many of them did not let their military career define them.

These noble defenders of freedom eventually all come back to being a regular "civilian" sooner or later. And, making that transition from the battlefields to the business and/or working world should truly be applauded.

Soldiers need to adapt back to normal life and no one has done so with more success than Bristol Borough's own, Joseph Cuttone.

Cuttone's military career was very short. In fact, in the early part of the second world war, Cuttone was a turret lathe operator, which is a form of metalworking lathe that is used for repetitive production of duplicate parts, at the Hunter Manufacturing Company.
There, he also performed the duties of staff photographer for their newsletter, the “Hunter Projectile.”

Joseph was drafted in 1943 to the Navy Seabees, the Construction Battalions of the US Navy, and was sent to Williamsburg, VA.

This is where his military career outlook became very bleak. As Cuttone entered the service, he no sooner entered then he had to leave.

Joseph received a medical discharge from the Navy because his “eyes were not good enough” and it prohibited him from performing some of the required duties.

While the armed forces were sad to see him go, the Bristol Borough community were thrilled to welcome a future local staple into town.

The 92-year-old Cuttone remembers his early days in Bristol, a town that barely resembles the modern version that we are all accustomed to seeing today.

“When I was a kid, Bristol was not what it is today, there was lots of open land," said Cuttone. "I was raised on goat’s milk and most of the food that we ate was raised in our yard.”
Joe’s dad, Andrew, was a farmer and his mother, Francesca, worked at the [Keystone] Steel’s Woolen Mill. Cuttone helped his parents, by kneading the bread and collected eggs from the hen house and picking the best good green grass for the goats so the milk was richer.

“When my dad said something, I listened.”

Right around the time Cuttone's life was uncertain with his military, something great happened: Joe met his wife, Catherine R. Vitale, at a picnic in New Jersey. Their first date was sharing a sundae in an ice cream parlor in Camden.

Catherine died just last year, only a month before her and Joseph's 66th wedding anniversary.
So after marriage, Cuttone attempted to enter the political world. Joseph ran for public office as Fourth Ward councilman, five times. He also for the School board and as tax collector. His cousin, Anna Bono Larrisey, is the current Borough tax collector. Anna’s grandfather and Joe’s grandmother were brother and sister.

But, Cuttone's true calling was yet to come.

Joseph now runs an old-fashioned barbershop.

Barber Cuttone learned his trade in Brownie’s Barber School in Trenton. He cut Senator Joseph Ridgway Grundy’s hair there, in fact. This has now been his career for over three quarters of a century.

Joseph has been barbering for almost 75 years and continues to do what he loves.

So much for that eye problem, as Cuttone has continually performed a great service to many generations of Bristolians.

Cuttone also gave much of his time back to the community in other ways.

"Joe was on the committee of the Columbus 500 organization and we did several projects together," said local sculptor Joe Pavone. "We produced an Italian Immigration documentary film and Joe played a very important part, very verbal and such a keen memory. He is really a Bristol Borough character."

***
Cate Murway contributed to this piece.

Newtown woman was a pioneer during World War II.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com


U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Cora Wehmeyer Henderson of Newtown was one of the first women to enlist in the Armed Forces at the time of World War II.

At age 90, Cora thrives on being independent. As she talks about her time in the service, Cora does so with great detail. She sits at her kitchen table, showing vintage photographs of her as a WAC (Women’s Army Corps.) Before the WACs, she explained, there was the WAAC (The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps).

“I’m probably one of the only ones who are still alive,” Cora joked.

What strikes you about Cora is her keen memory. People find her to be witty and intelligent. She has been described as “a remarkable woman.”

Cora made a career of the Air Force, serving more than two decades and retiring as a Senior Master Sergeant.

In her collection of memorabilia, Cora has a copy of a 1951 Parade magazine cover. She is one of four in uniform, along with three other women, each from a different branch of the service.
“I was with the first group of enlisted women,” Cora said. She was working at the former Budd Company’s Wheel and Locomotive facility in Philadelphia. Budd later became a defense plant.
“We were painting Bazooka guns. You wore a mask and overalls. I worked the swing shift – 3 to 11,” she said.

Cora had read in the Philadelphia Bulletin that an organization for women in the military was forming. “The first day you could apply, I was down there,” she recalled. “People thought I was crazy. My pay was $21 a month in the service.”

She went in as a private first class. The women officers, who had gone to college, went to training first. “They had to train us,” she explained. “We were sworn in September, 1942.” Basic training, which took four weeks, was in October 1942 in Des Moines, Iowa.

During her first assignment, she lived in a hotel in Miami, Fla. “We were with an aircraft warning service in November 1942.

“In March 1943, we went to Orlando to the Army Air Corps Base where the work had to do with training fighter pilots,” she remembered.

Next, it was overseas to England with the 8th Air Force until V.E. (Victory in Europe) Day in May 1945.

“I was in communications,” she noted. In a picture, she is sitting with three other “operators.” These women were connecting teletype machines with the bomber bases in England.
She worked in an underground facility right outside of London. She described it like a switchboard. There was another one for the Prime Minister. “We were in the one at High Wycombe,” she said. Her shift started at 11 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. “We kept rotating,” she noted.

Cora would later become the base chief operator at the telephone exchange at Eglin Base in Florida because she had some practice on a switchboard.

One of her favorite pictures is of her receiving a commendation medal. “They gave me a review,” she said. “I was escorted up to the presenting officer.” A general pinned the medal on her.
“After we won the war, I was shipped to Germany. The only way we could stay in was civil service. Six months later, they wanted us back in,” she maintained.

“They needed help with the demobilization [in 1945] – that’s why I went back in,” she said. She worked in administrative training and recruiting.

For four years, Cora worked at the Pentagon as an administrative assistant to the director of the Women in the Air Force (WAF).

She continued climbing the ladder. One of the rungs was working in Baltimore at the Third Army recruiting headquarters. She served there from 1948 until 1950 and later transferred to Philadelphia as a recruiter, where she was stationed until 1952.

Next stop was Weisbaden, Germany and in 1954 she went to San Antonio, Texas. Then, it was time to head back to Pennsylvania where she could live in Hatboro to be with her mother.
The next assignment took her to McGuire Air Force Base. Going there was a major turning point in her life, Cora noted. “I met John,” she said of her late husband. They were married in the chapel on the base. Three hundred people attended.

Cora is a charter member of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, which is located at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

When the memorial was dedicated in 1998, people came from all over the country. “It was quite an event and I was lucky to be there,” Cora said.

Because of the memorial, people will be able to see her military history on the computer for years to come.

She likes that idea.

Former Honor Guard member is well aware of his good fortune.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com


U.S. Army veteran Joe Swerk could have very easily been sent to Vietnam, a place where many of his friends ended up and a place he was all but sure he was headed given the time in which he was drafted. But Swerk, who’s fully aware and appreciative of his good fortune, wasn’t thrown into the fray. Instead, the laid-back Newtown resident was assigned to the Army’s Honor Guard in Washington, D.C., a relatively classy gig that, among other things, came with the responsibility of watching over John F. Kennedy’s grave. Ironically, Swerk’s military service, which often required him to stand at attention for long stretches, was followed by a life that, in more ways than one, has been the antithesis of standing still.

Swerk was born in Darby, Pa. in 1947 to parents Nina and Joseph II, but he grew up in and around the Newtown area. He, his parents, and his older sister, Gay, moved in to a home on East Holland Road when he was three, and the family also lived in Wrightstown and Newtown – just a stone’s throw from where Swerk resides today. He graduated from the old Council Rock High School – which is now Newtown Middle School – in 1966, spent a short time at Cambridge School of Broadcasting in Boston, then returned home to study liberal arts at Bucks County Community College.

“That wasn’t going so well, so I decided to join the Navy,” Swerk says, explaining that he signed up for a “120-day delay plan,” which, as described, involved a four-month waiting period prior to active duty. During that period, Swerk was working full-time at an industrial quarry in Wrightstown. While on the job, he broke his leg, an injury that would make him ineligible for Naval service.

“At the time, I was thinking that I was in pretty good shape,” Swerk says. “I had received a medical discharge and thought the time served with the Navy was done. Then the Army sent me my draft notice.”

Swerk was drafted in October of 1967 and, just after the following Christmas, he shipped out to Fort Bragg, N.C. for basic training. Following the advice of an older vet, Swerk “never volunteered for anything, because, usually (according to the old-timer), what you’d volunteer for wasn’t what you’d get.” (Swerk offers the example of a drill sergeant asking which soldiers have driver’s licenses, and then telling those soldiers who stepped up to “drive brooms” all across the floor.)

Advanced infantry training followed at California’s Fort Ord, where Swerk spent eight weeks.
“That was during the height of the Vietnam War,” Swerk says. “We were all pretty much convinced that we were going to Vietnam.”

Some did. Some went to Germany. Not Swerk. In 1968, he and nine other men from his company were sent to Fort Myer, Va., a base that surrounds the outer edge of Arlington National Cemetery and houses the guards of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (Swerk says he was initially interested in taking a job as the guards’ driver, but since he’d never volunteered for anything, he lacked the required military license.) He soon learned that he’d been pre-selected for permanent duty with the Honor Guard (of which the guards of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are a division). Back when he’d first reported for basic training, Swerk’s specifications – height, weight, background, etc. – were found to match the requirements of Honor Guard members, and his future was basically decided for him.

Within the ceremonial unit (which presides over all presidential and official affairs in D.C.), Swerk wound up in the (now disbanded) JFK platoon, whose job it was to guard the fallen president’s grave site. During his time with the Honor Guard (which lasted until September of 1969), Swerk also took part in the funeral services for Robert Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and crossed paths with the likes of John Glenn, Andy Williams and Peter Lawford. It was Swerk’s responsibility to ward off mobs and photographers, in addition to being put on alert in response to the Martin Luther King-related riots that were igniting the city at the time.

“The stories he’d tell me were incredible,” says Judy, Swerk’s wife of nearly 41 years who was living with him in D.C. while he served with the Honor Guard. “And one of the things that made (his service) so interesting was how many famous people he came in contact with.”

“It was good duty,” says Swerk, who cites “discipline” and “decorum” as the two most valuable lessons he learned during his military tenure.

Once Swerk was discharged, he and Judy – who first met as children playing in the same Newtown neighborhood (“first friends, then best friends, then married,” she says) – returned to the Bucks County area and lived in Levittown for a time. While waiting to be accepted into a veteran’s program at the Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.), Swerk put in a short stint as a police officer in Newtown Borough. When he was finally accepted to R.I.T., the couple moved to Rochester so he could complete his degree. Through the years they’ve also lived in Flemington, N.J., Maryland and, of course, Newtown.

Swerk has worked for a photography hardware company for whom he traveled across the east coast; opened (and later closed) a line of fast food restaurants with a friend in the ‘80s; sold cars at the Faulkner dealership in Trevose; served as a mortgage broker; and all the while remained consistently active with the Newtown Ambulance Squad, an organization with which he’s been somehow affiliated since the age of 16. Swerk is now the president of that organization, and is also the sergeant-at-arms of Newtown’s American Legion Post 440. He has two children, Jill and Joseph IV, two grandchildren, and two other babies: his fishing pole and his motorcycle.

“I’ve been really lucky,” Swerk says.

The U.S. Army opened doors for this Vietnam veteran

By Tara Fatzinger, BucksLocalNews.com

When he looks back on his life, retired 1st Lt. Tom Yaegel remembers, with a chuckle, a childhood desire to attend West Point and join the United States Army.

Eventually a bachelor’s degree in accounting, the guarantee of a secure post-college job and visions of a future with his long-time sweetheart pushed his inner soldier aside.

Then in August 1969 – just three months after Yaegel graduated from St. Joseph’s College – the draft notice came. With that one little piece of paper, everything changed and Yaegel knew his life would never be as he originally planned.

“At first it was like I was dealt a lousy hand but in hindsight it was one of the best things that happened,” he said. “It all worked out just great.”

He ultimately decided there were only two choices; he could either accept the inevitable, serve in Vietnam and be done after two-years or he could turn the draft into an opportunity to apply his college education while serving in the Army.

“It was not an easy choice to make,” he said. “I talked to a recruiter and after much soul searching I said, ‘well, OK, if I’m going to do this I’m going to do it the best way I know how’ and that was to try and get a commission.”

So it was off to Officer Candidate School for Tom Yaegel. After a grueling 10-month process at Ft. Belvoir, Va., in July 1970, he was pinned as a 2nd Lieutenant for the United States Army.
He married his sweetheart, Ann, a week later and together the young couple embarked on an adventure neither would soon forget, one that would eventually shape the rest of their lives.
“We packed up a little 4 by 6 U-Haul trailer and moved off to Ft. Benning,” Yaegel said with a laugh. “We really enjoyed that first year.”

But in May 1971 the young couple’s newlywed bliss living among the structured, neatly manicured grounds of Ft. Benning came to an end when Yaegel received his deployment orders to Vietnam.

He was set to depart that August.

Ann, Yaegel said, was obviously concerned but she refused to allow his absence to consume her. She returned to work full-time as a nurse in order to keep herself busy and help her husband build a healthy savings account.

“She was really great,” Yaegel said. “We used it (the deployment) as an opportunity to save some money.”

When he arrived in Vietnam, Yaegel, who was trained as an Army engineer, chose to work as the camp engineer and finance manager for the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Operations Group, better known as MACV-SOG.

The men of MACV-SOG are among the most highly decorated soldiers of the Vietnam era, having collectively earned nine Congressional Medals of Honor and 23 Distinguished Service Crosses. Yaegel was eventually awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service as a member of MACV-SOG.

The unit was established on Jan. 24, 1964, as a highly classified multi-service Army special operations unit, the function of which was to conduct covert, unconventional warfare missions before and during United States involvement in Vietnam.

MACV-SOG spent much of its time in Vietnam embarking on strategic reconnaissance missions in North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, captured enemy prisoners, conducted rescue missions for downed American pilots and to retrieve allied prisoners from war camps throughout Southeast Asia. The men were also ordered to complete covert activities and psychological operations.

“This unit had to bear the brunt of the war,” Yaegel said.

To complete these missions MACV-SOG employed and trained Montangard tribesmen of Vietnam’s Central Highlands as soldiers, he said, and were divided into three different operating units; Command and Control South, which was based near Ban Me Thout; Command and Control Central near Kontum and Command and Control North just outside Pleiku.

“They placed me with Command and Control South,” Yaegel said.

During Vietnam, Congress had forbidden American soldiers from operating in neighboring countries Cambodia and Laos but the Hochiminh Trail led through both countries and one of MACV-SOG’s many functions was to run reconnaissance missions into the two nations in order to identify targets that could be attacked from the air, Yaegel said.

Since Cambodia and Laos were technically forbidden lands, MACV-SOG was ordered to change the official coordinates to make it appear as though their operations were completed within Vietnam’s borders.

“We would train the mercenaries for cross border operations,” Yaegel said. “We would send them across the border to keep the enemy at bay. They (the Montangard tribesmen) were under our command. These operations actually saved a lot of American lives.”

The final offensive that caused the fall of Saigon, ultimately ending the Vietnam War, came through Ban Me Thout in March 1975, three years after Yaegel completed his tour and MACV-SOG was disbanded.

“We were just sitting there staving it off for as long as we could. We had everything under control. All we had to do was leave some troops behind to maintain air control” and give the people a chance to find a strong, just leader to send them on their way to political and economic freedom, he said.

“We just didn’t allow enough time and I feel bad and guilty about it to this day,” Yaegel continued. “I became close to many of the tribesmen and when it was all over they were the ones executed by those in control because of who they sided with (MACV-SOG.)”

After Yaegel returned he was “basically laid off,” as he likes to say, by the Army because of massive military cutbacks. “I had grown to like the Army,” he said. “I was comfortable with my job and got a nice paycheck so it wasn’t an easy transition back.”

But, as with everything else in his life, Yaegel made the most of it. He earned his master’s degree in Business Administration from Temple University and went on to work for Arthur Anderson and Co. as an audit manager and eventually became the senior vice president.

“That was where I really got to use my military experience and take charge in certain situations,” he said.

In 1982 Yaegel purchased the Richboro Swim Club and, in the meantime, continued to work as a banking consultant all over the U.S.

Today, Yaegel still runs the swim club, an advertising agency, a small travel agency specializing in Virgin Island vacations and – after the swimming season is over – the wildly popular Valley of Fear haunted hayrides.

And when it comes to his military experience as a whole Yaegel has no regrets. In fact, he credits the Army for giving him the strength, skills and courage to turn his life into the successful venture it has been.

“I’ve had the blessing of doing a lot of interesting things and I thank the Army for that. It all started with the Army,” he said. “I got to see a lot more of what went on at a higher level than the average 1st Lieutenant. It was a great educational experience for me. I had the chance to work with a lot of Special Forces troops and I feel fortunate for that experience.”