Hero of the Pacific_ The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone - James Brady [65]
Here is Doorly on that September 19 in Raritan from local accounts by people like Peter Vitelli (also one of my sources), who was then a six-year-old schoolboy: “At 11:30 there was a lunch in Basilone’s honor headed by the reception committee at The Raritan Valley Farms Inn, a popular restaurant . . . on the Somerville Circle where the Super 8 Motel is today. Then, at 1 p.m. the parade started. Total attendance was estimated at 30,000 . . . the groups marching included The American Legion, VFW, state and local police, service men on leave, French Navy Soldiers [their Marines, it can be assumed], Coast Guard, drum & bugle corps, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Red Cross units, Air Raid Wardens, The Italian American Society, Raritan First Aid Squad, soldiers from Camp Kilmer, and various marching bands.”
The whole catalog shouts quintessential Americana on parade, the local hero, whether Medal of Honor winner or captain of the high school’s winning football eleven, passing the home folks in review. In a nice nostalgic touch, one marcher was John Reilly, who had four decades earlier been awarded the Medal of Honor during the Spanish-American War. “John Basilone rode in an open car with his parents Sal and Dora, who beamed with pride throughout the parade,” Doorly reported. “Also in his car was Private Stephen Helstowski of Pittsfield, Mass. [who had] fought with John on Guadalcanal and had been injured in the battle.”
There’s a photo from that parade showing Basilone sitting happily, high atop the backseat of the convertible behind his parents, with Helstowski in the front passenger seat alongside a capped and uniformed chauffeur, Basilone waving at the crowd and the sun-drenched crowd gawking and some waving back, little kids and a few uniformed servicemen and women visible, several people walking behind or beside the slowly moving auto, so slowly that Basilone was able to shake hands with pedestrians even as the open car rolled along without having to stop, some of the handshakers aging vets from World War I.
Flags flew, the weather was perfect, and little Peter Vitelli remembered how orderly the big crowd was as he sat on the curb in front of St. Ann’s Church watching the parade pass by and eventually halt and morph into a “rally.” At some point, the lovely actress Louise Allbritton was kissing Basilone. There is no mention of Virginia Grey. The disgraced though still popular former New York City mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker somehow showed up, ubiquitous, beaming and shaking hands, “working the room,” so to speak. This had become commonplace, people wanting to be seen with the hero, wanting to be associated with him. To a fallen idol like Walker, this was the sort of event he needed and could use. The crowd, as anticipated, was so great that “local rich girl made good” Doris Duke Cromwell had generously invited the committee to move everyone onto her vast estate, where they’d erected a grandstand, and to continue the festivities, holding the culminating rally right there, which is just what they did. Father Russo gave an invocation. A local girl, Catherine Mastice, who would later sing in the 1949 Radio City Music Hall Christmas show, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Anthony Hudek, then wide-eyed and thirteen years old, recalls, “It was as if the world came to Raritan.”
A five-thousand-dollar war bond was presented to Basilone, and he responded gracefully, accepting it “for all my buddies overseas on the front lines—they really appreciate everything you wonderful people are doing by ‘backing the attack’ [he had the advertising agency selling line down pat by now] and buying these war bonds. Today is like a dream to me. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.” Former state senator Joseph Frelinghuysen (from a local family of considerable wealth and distinction and himself