Warsaw Veteran Feels Blessed For The Life He Lived
Warsaw Veteran Feels Blessed For The Life He Lived
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Warsaw Veteran Feels Blessed For The Life He LivedA highlight of Don Correira’s Honor Flight on Sept. 19 was when his grandson – a major in the Marine Corps who works at the Pentagon – surprised him at the military monuments in Washington, D.C.
“I’m blessed beyond belief,” Correira said recently during an interview at his Warsaw home.
Correira, who served in the Army during the Korean War, was sponsored on the trip by Joe Wilkey, a veteran himself. It was the second time Wilkey served as a guardian for a veteran on an Honor Flight.
An Honor Flight is conducted by nonprofit organizations dedicated to taking as many United States military veterans as possible to see the memorials of the war they fought in, in Washington, D.C. There is no cost to the veterans; the chaperones pay for their flights.
Correira said many veterans on Honor Flight 29 were disabled. There also was a woman, Agatha Tourney, on the flight. She was an Army nurse during World War II.
Correira was a first-born child in Fall River, Mass., to immigrant parents from Portugal. His dad wanted to be an American, but didn’t get his citizenship until he was 47. Correira was a Depression-era baby born in April 1933.
“That was a different time,” he said.
When World War II broke out, five of his uncles went to war. His dad was a family man and didn’t get to serve during the war.
“He was a patriot. He was an evangelist,” he said.
When the Korean War broke out, Correira had received a scholarship to study architecture. His buddies got drafted, and when Correira tried to enlist he was told “no.” But the demand for soldiers got so great, the Army ended up taking him anyway.
He trained at Aberdeen (Md.) Proving Grounds as a direct support officer. His duties included making sure everything went where and to whom it was supposed to go.
But then he was sent to the jungles of Panama around June 1952. After being trained himself, he trained other soldiers how to survive in jungle conditions and how to escape should they be captured. He said they trained Fidel Castro’s troops, though at the time Castro was seen as a hero.
Though Correira never was shipped to Korea, he made it to corporal.
Correira went back to college after serving in the Army from 1952 to 1956. After a stint in the Army Reserves for about a year, he joined the Air Force, working in intelligence, from 1957 to 1961.
He met his wife through the military and they had several children. They raised their children in upstate New York, but eventually their children grew up and they followed them to Indiana.
“It’s been a blessed, absolutely blessed life,” he said.
