“Don’t Be Afraid.” A Veteran Looks Back on a Life of Work and Service
Updated: 9 hours ago
Southington resident Joe DellaPorta was recently recognized for the work he has done with Rachel Wache and Joe Woloszyn updating the list of names on the town’s war memorial. But his commitment to service is hardly new or limited to that effort; in fact, it stretches back decades. It is for these efforts that, on December 8, DellaPorta will be formally inducted into the Southington High School Wall of Honor.
Back in September, the Southington Outsider met with DellaPorta to talk about his life, his service to others, and his beliefs. Sitting at a table in the basement-level bar of the American Legion hall downtown, with dozens of pieces of military and veteran-related memorabilia hanging on the walls, he took us on a trip down memory lane.
“I was born in Italy,” said DellaPorta. “I came here when I was ten years old, in 1958. My dad came here three years before. Caserta, that’s where I’m from. There wasn’t much there; you lived off the land - pigs, chickens, rabbits - and you grow wheat. We had grape vines, and olive trees to make our own oil. My dad made wine. It was all farm.”
“My dad came here. Then he sent for us, my mother and I. My sister couldn’t come because she was over age and she would have to wait. She found her husband and made a life over there.”
“I grew up here, went to school. There were a couple of kids at school that came here before I did that spoke Italian. So they helped a little. Going to school every day at that age, you absorb the language quickly. I did okay.”
“Downtown on Liberty Street is where I grew up. And I’m still there. We rented a house on Liberty St. Then my parents bought a house just down the road, and I grew up there.”
“During that period of time there was a lot of activity in Vietnam, a lot of casualties. Not only was I scared, but a lot of kids were scared of getting drafted and going. We had a couple of kids from town that went and got killed. It was tough. I tried to see if I could get a deferment, but I really didn’t have a lot of guidance. I talked to the guidance counselors. They said, what do you want to be? I said, I’m good at math, maybe a math teacher? So I applied to Central. I did go there, but it was not what I expected college to be. I was taking classes I was not interested in. So I ended up flunking out.”
“That’s how I went into the navy. I enlisted in the navy for four years. And even to this day every time I think of my friends who died in ‘Nam, it brings tears.”
“My first assignment was after boot camp and schools. I spent a little over a year up in Iceland at the naval communications station. After that I went aboard the USS Keppler, which is a destroyer. It was on the destroyer that we did a tour of Vietnam. We went to Vietnam and our duty was to go along the shore and provide artillery support to the troops. Also we did aircraft carrier escorts, protecting the aircraft carriers, or, if there was any mishaps with the planes, rescuing the pilots from the ocean. We went there in late 1970 and came back August 1971. I was discharged in December 1971.”
“I came home and I was with my family. It was a tough period of time. There was a lot of animosity against war veterans. Basically they looked down at the people who served. We were not welcomed home. I did not have it too bad, but some of my colleagues got spit at, yelled at. You didn’t want to talk about Vietnam.”
“I tried to find a job, I couldn’t find a job. Since I had some electrical background from the service, I tried to get an apprenticeship as an electrician, but the job market was not very good. The VA counselor, thank god, he helped. He gave me an aptitude test and pushed me to go back to school, to college. I said, no! I flunked out once, I don’t want to flunk out again. He says, why don’t you try a two year college? I went to see a couple of them, and I ended up going to Hartford State Technical College, off of Flatbush.”
“It was good. I was a little bit scared that I would flunk out, so I worked my butt off. I did a lot of study. I ended up after two years graduating at the top of my class. Yeah. I got the alumni award.”
“When I graduated I went to Superior Electric in Bristol. Then I had a decision for my wife and I to make. During that period I got married, I had a daughter. We said, either I continue school or I stay there. My wife said, why don’t you continue? She took on extra duties, and I had my parents to help with the kids. So I continued working full-time and going to school part-time at the University of Hartford. I graduated in 1980 with a bachelor of science and two certificates, one in computer science and one in controls engineering.”
“Then I left Superior and went to work at Bristol Babcock for a year. After that I went to a robotics startup company in East Hartford. The funding for that dried up and we all got laid off. So I said, that’s enough, and started to look for a more permanent job.”
“I got two offers, one at Otis Elevator and the other at Telecom in Meriden that makes things for oil drilling. I decided to work for Otis, over in Farmington. I had 29 years at Otis. Did a lot of development work. The one that I enjoyed the most was developing motor drives.”
“There was a group I was in charge of that did drive development. I worked on a new system where they had the concept but they didn’t have any parts. I had to figure out what components we had that could be used for it and come up with the interfaces. That was interesting. You did different things.”
“I didn’t join the Legion until 1984. There was a thing about being in the military after Vietnam. After I joined, I found a lot of veterans that were in similar situations. We talked a lot. In the late 80’s, we started – here and nationally - visiting homes: if any military person was coming home, we welcomed them. Also, when they leave, we did a thing where we said, good luck, and we expect you to come back. Nowadays that mentality has really caught on.”
“If I see our fellow veterans struggling, if I can help, I want to help. We do a lot of support with the Rocky Hill veterans home. Whatever the veterans need to make their life easier, we try to provide it. Raised beds to plant flowers, so that anybody in a wheelchair can go up and plant. Or birdfeeders so that they can watch the birds through the window. Things like that.”
“Before Covid, we used to sponsor a bingo up there. Since Covid, it hasn’t happened. I’d like to start it up again. A month ago we went up there for an ice cream social.”
“Here at the Legion, it’s been a lot of hard work on that monument [on the green], verifying the names. Joe and I and Rachel have been doing a lot of work on that. Hopefully we can see the light at the end of the tunnel of doing that research.”
“I’ve been back to Italy. I have my family there, my wife has her family. My sister passed but she has three daughters; we still contact each other. My brother, he died, but he has three kids. We have some cousins in Italy, my wife has five aunts and one uncle. We were back there last year. In the beginning of October, it was nice, it wasn’t that hot. We helped my wife’s nephew pick grapes. He has a vineyard, we made the wine.”
“My cousin always used to say, Italy is my mother, but the US is my stepmother. And my stepmother has been better than my mother at providing. You can’t forget the one, but you cannot forget the other one.”
“I do love the country. It provides a decent life for us. I get frustrated when I see people don’t respect the flag. That’s one of my pet peeves. It bothers me a lot when I see people not respecting the flag, not respecting the country.”
“If I could say something to young people, it would be, don’t be afraid. It’s not as bad as you think. The experience that you gain is worth more than you can know.”
“I was afraid of being enlisted, because it was scary. But once I enlisted, a lot of those fears went away. Because you’re not alone, you make a lot of friends, and you’re there for the same purpose. You work together - I watch your back, you watch my back. A totally different way of living than going to high school. Don’t be afraid to join the military, don’t be afraid whatever you do, it’s not as bad as you think.”
After we were done talking, DellaPorta walked over to a framed newspaper page hanging on a wall by the bar. An article from the New Haven Register dated July 13, 1969, it tells the story of nine young men from Southington who died in Vietnam.
Looking at it, DellaPorta talked about one of the nine, Paul Dumin.
“We went to see a football game behind the high school, the Thanksgiving Day football game. That was a big thing. Paul had his uniform on, he looked sharp. I talked to him. He told me that after Thanksgiving he was going to ‘Nam. A couple weeks later, he got there and he died. He wasn’t there that long, maybe a week.”
“Paul Dumin, Billy Beard and Ray Burgess. Those are the three that I knew pretty well. Paul Dumin, he lived on High Street. It’s a parking lot now where his house was.”
“Every time I look at this, it brings tears.”
