Surprise! Family honors WWII vet for 95th birthday
Frank DeGennaro served in World War II, earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. DeGennaro turned 95 April 12 and celebrated Saturday with a surprise party.
Along with celebrating his 95th birthday, Frank DeGennaro also has cause to celebrate for 68 years of marriage to his wife, Lillian.
Frank DeGennaro blows out the candles on his birthday cake. DeGennaro turned 95 April 12 and celebrated with family Saturday.
Frank DeGennaro greets his nephew, Dennis DeGennaro of Clinton, during a surprise 95th birthday party Saturday. Family traveled from miles away to celebrate Frank’s milestone birthday.
Considering his birthday actually was 11 days earlier, Frank DeGennaro’s surprise party Saturday really was a surprise.
But when you’re gathering a group of family members to celebrate someone turning 95, the wait is well worth it, especially considering the guest of honor is a decorated World War II veteran.
His son, also named Frank, and daughter-in-law Patti DeGennaro hosted the celebration at their Peters Township home, where the elder Frank, a Canonsburg native, also lives.
Framed and hanging on the wall of his bedroom is a display of his medals, most notably the Bronze Star, presented for heroic achievement in a combat zone.
In early 1945, as a member of the 11th Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, DeGennaro was among the Allied troops attempting to take control of Luzon, which served as a major base of Japanese operations in the Philippines. At one point, heavy casualties forced his unit’s withdrawal from its position.
“The Japanese were still shooting at us when the company started to retreat, go back,” he recalled, “and I stood there, kept firing against the hillside where the firing was coming from. That’s all.”
He was surprised when he learned he was going to receive a medal.
“The lieutenant came up to me and congratulated me and said, ‘You’re going to get a Bronze Star,”’ DeGennaro recalled. “And I said, ‘For what?'”
Actually, his bravery could have been recognized on a higher level.
“His company commander put him in for a Silver Star, but then the top brass said, no, that’s a bronze,” the younger Frank said. “I told him I’d spray-paint it silver.”
Whatever the case, the resulting commendation tells a hero’s story:
“With utter disregard for his personal safety, Pfc. Frank DeGennaro, acting on his own initiative, moved forward over the fire-swept terrain to an exposed position and opened fire on the enemy emplacements. Pouring a devastating fire into the enemy, this soldier effectively covered his unit’s withdrawal by neutralizing the enemy’s fire.”
He also earned a Purple Heart for a wound in his right thigh he sustained while his unit was advancing on an airfield near the Philippines capital of Manila, an injury that he tends to downplay despite the reaction of the medics.
“They were going to put me in a field hospital, but I said, ‘No, I’ll be all right,'” he recalled.
After playing a significant role in the liberation of the Philippines, the 11th Airborne was to take part in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland under Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Paratroopers, including DeGennaro, were to disembark at the Atsugi air base in August 1945. The mission was canceled, though, shortly before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, and the troops arrived by airplane.
“The whole airfield had all kinds of weapons,” DeGennaro said. “If we’d have jumped on Atsugi airstrip, we never would have made it.”
With the end of the war, he was among five sons of Nunzio and Angelina DeGennaro – Angelo, Mike, Anthony and Albert were the others – who returned home to Canonsburg intact after serving their country.
And as was the case with Frank at his birthday party, everyone they knew must have been proud.