Meet Harry Aivano, Durham's Memorial Day Parade Grand Marshal

It took a nudge from a good friend and fellow veteran but Harry Aivano is ready to step up and serve again.

The 92-year-old U.S. Navy World War II veteran was chosen as Grand Marshal of this year's Memorial Day Parade in Durham which will step-off from the corner of Haddam Quarter Road and Route 17 at 9:15 a.m. Monday, before making its way down Main Street amid flag-waving children and residents honoring fallen heroes.

Aivano was born in Maromas — a neighborhood in the southeast corner of Middletown along the Connecticut River — grew up in Durham and now lives in Middlefield, making him the perfect candidate to lead the community's annual patriotic parade.

"Charlie [Arrigoni] was asking me for two years to be the Grand Marshal and finally I said, 'Well, I'm going to be 93 in January and how many years do I have left? Yeah, I'll do it,'" Aivano said.

Born in 1921, Aivano spent his early childhood in Middletown in a home without electricity. He would later attend Durham High School for two years before transferring to Vinal Technical School where he left before graduating to become, of all things, an electrician.

Aivano had worked in the trade for three years and had met his soon-to-be wife of 65 years, Helen, when, like many young men at the time, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 changed his life forever.

"We were going to get married in June 1942 but the war broke out so my wife said 'Why don't we get married, at least have some time together?' So we got married January 24th, 1942," Aivano recalled.

He enlisted in the Navy in September 1942 and was shipped off to the Naval training station at Coddington Point, Rhode Island before being sent to Norfolk, Virginia.

Eventually he'd join the crew of the USS Salamonie, an oil tanker that cruised both the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II, refueling submarines, PT boats, aircraft carriers and destroyers.

As Aivano remembered, his time in the Navy didn't start off so smoothly.

"The first trip we made was gonna be to Casablanca [North Africa]. We were five days out of New York and we rammed a troop transport," he said. The accident tore apart the ship's bow. 

"We hit 'em under the sick bay and when we pulled out a soldier fell with his mattress right on the skin of the ship. This was one o'clock in the morning," he recalled.

The crew was under strict orders from the Admiral not to turn on any lights, Aivano recalled, because doing so would allow German submarines in the Atlantic to identify American vessels, leading to almost certain trouble.

As it were, the Salamonie was a high-value target of the enemy because of its role in the war.

"That's the first thing they'd go for is the fuel. No fuel, no go," said Aivano, who despite sleeping over 100,000 barrels of gasoline said there was no time to be nervous aboard the tanker.

"You'd die in a week if you got nervous," he said.

In July, 1944, the Salamonie sailed for the Pacific, a trip that would take Aivano and the ship's 241-member crew through the Panama Canal.

"What a sight that was," he said.

After passing over the equator, the ship headed for New Guinea, which at the time was still occupied by the enemy. After refueling some ships, the Salamonie headed to the Philippines where Aivano experienced one of the war's more definitive moments, the Battle of Leyte.

"[Gen. Douglas] MacArthur came back and he waited ashore. He got in the water to above his boots and he walked ashore," he said. 

"We were there when the tide turned on the Japanese. We were there for that battle, there was a big Naval battle."

Aivano would serve in the Navy until December 1945 — two months after the Japanese surrender.

Upon returning from the war, he earned his G.E.D. and began taking classes at Central Connecticut State University. Within a year, he transferred to the University of Connecticut to study electrical engineering but after just one semester Helen gave birth to the couple's first of three children and Aivano left school for good to support his family.

"I worked 35 years for IBM. I was a service engineer. We were in the punchcard era then," he laughed.

"I retired in 1983 and my wife and I did some traveling. We went to Alaska, the Rockies, down to Mexico. We went all over," he said.

These days, Aivano enjoys spending time with his family, including a grandson who lives in Alaska where he visits and fishes for halibut and salmon.

He's been a member of the Durham VFW for many years and will be accompanied by his daughter, Sandra, of Easton, Conn., during the parade.