Tuesday,
November 11, 2008
Six Brothers Serve US in WWII, While US
Raids Father
The
ANNOTICO Report
Tony
Savella joined the Navy after
One day while the
brothers were serving their country, five of them overseas, government
officials raided Antonio Santella
After
Roxbury siblings took up arms to fight in WWII
Daily Record
By
Abbott Koloff
November 11, 2008
Growing up during
the Depression, the six Santella brothers from
Roxbury were always together.
They picked
blueberries and sold them to vacationers at
And after the
Japanese attacked
Tony Santella, 87, the one surviving brother who now resides in
"I didn
Three months
later, he joined the Navy, and told his other brothers to do the same if they
wanted to live through World War II. Carmine, Razzie
and Ray joined Tony in the Navy, but Pete and Patsy ended up in the Army. They
all came home, all got married, and had a total of 17
children.
Of eight siblings,
Tony and a sister, Louise, are the only ones still alive.
Leading up to
Veterans Day today, Tony Santella and several families members talked about the family
Antonio Santella, the boys
One day while
the brothers were serving their country, five of them overseas, government
officials raided Antonio Santella
"My father
was mad," Tony Santella said. "He said,
The family had
sacrificed more than its share. While the six brothers all survived the war,
not all were unscathed.
Pete Santella participated in the
Tony Santella served on the USS Healy, a destroyer in the
Pacific, participating in a number of battles. He was at
"I
Razzie Santella
and others survived their ship being sunk by a torpedo in the Pacific. He told
his children that he expected to die when a Japanese submarine surfaced nearby.
For some reason, the Japanese gave them food and cigarettes and left them to be
rescued.
"He said he
was amazed they didn
Ray Santella, the youngest brother, was on a ship in the
Pacific preparing for the invasion of
"They spent
the night together," Lee Santella said.
When they parted,
Lee Santella said, they hugged and kissed, both
expecting to die during the coming invasion. Then the
Ray Santella stayed in the Navy after the war and was part of a
shore patrol unit in
After he left the
Navy, he walked into a restaurant where his wife worked as a waitress.
"He was
irresistible," Lee Santella said. "You had
to love him."
He was an
ironworker for 25 years but his wife said the war left him with recurring
nightmares.
The other
brothers also came home and found jobs -- Patsy, the oldest, became a
construction contractor; Pete worked with the
Razzie Santella
met his wife, Jean, at a dance at Bertram
He became known
for his patriotism, decorating his house in Roxbury with American flags. He
once attached a flag to a helium balloon that he controlled with a string, but
it apparently flew a little too high. Law enforcement officials asked him to
take it down.
"It might
have interfered with small aircraft," said Carol Jean Waldron, one of his
daughters.
And after he died
last year, his coffin was decorated with images of an aircraft carrier and
planes.
Tony Santella said he didn
"Were you
there?" she asked.
Tony Santella told her that he was, along with some of his
brothers. He said his granddaughter recently got a tattoo of an anchor on her
arm. When he asked her why, she told him she wanted to look at it for the rest
of her life, and to think about him.
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