Eagle Feathers #182 – Welcome Home

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

This past weekend the remains of United States Army Sergeant George R. Schipani were brought home to Somerville and laid to rest in the city’s Veterans Memorial Cemetery. The ceremony was concluded with full Military, Municipal, and Veterans’ groups’ honors.

The nineteen-year-old former Winter Hill resident was captured in 1950 during Korean combat; and along with thousands of others, he died in an enemy Prisoner of War Camp. Buried first in Korea for three years until 1954, his remains were then brought to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they rested in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific until January of this year when his remains were finally identified. He had been an unknown soldier for over 68 years.

Another Somerville soldier, United States Marine Corps Sergeant Henry O. Hansen still rests today in the same National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. The twenty-six-year-old soldier died fighting on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. He helped raise “both” American flags on Mount Suribachi during the iconic battle and was originally buried in the Fifth Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima Island. Born in 1919, the hero would have been 100 years old this year.

The re-internment of United States Navy Commander Richard Somers, the namesake of our city, has long been a thorn in the side of many Americans. Somers, a martyred hero of the 1804 War with Tripoli, is buried on that city’s shore. In 1842, Somerville’s first year, James Fenimore Cooper, America’s first-born novelist wrote a biography about Captain Somers. He also then called for the remains of Somers and his crew to be returned home from Tripoli. To this day, Somers and his men are still there in unmarked graves.

Twenty-two-year-old United States Army Private George Dilboy won the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his valor in France during World War I. The Somerville hero was the first Greek American to do so. During his funeral in Greece, the service was disrupted and his remains were desecrated by marauding Turkish troops. This created an international incident that involved three United States leaders. President Woodrow Wilson authorized his medal of honor; President Warren G. Harding had his remains brought back to America; and President Calvin Coolidge presided at his Arlington National Cemetery burial.

Twenty-two-year-old United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Richard J. Gordon was the 69th veteran to be laid to rest in Somerville’s Veterans Memorial Cemetery. He was killed in the 1983 Beirut, Lebanon, terrorist bombing which took 241 servicemen’s lives. It was the greatest one-day loss the Marine Corps sustained since Iwo Jima. Sergeant Schipani was the 70th.

A military quote by John Maxwell Edmonds: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrows, we gave our today.”