Islip's D-Day ceremony honors local veterans

More than 100 participants and observers at a D-Day commemoration Saturday across from Islip Town Hall took away a bit of World War II history, portrayed by some of its heroes and a historian.

"I didn't actually hit Omaha Beach on D-Day but on June 8," Anthony Marchione, 87, of East Islip told a small group before the morning ceremony. "A lot of bodies, bloated or their clothes puffed up, were still floating in the water. We couldn't pick any of them up - we weren't allowed to because some bodies had been booby-trapped."

Marchione, who was attached to the 990th Signal Battalion, was one of five participants in the Allied invasion of Normandy - on June 6, 1944, and several days following - who were honored at the town's Veterans Memorial Park.

The others were former Suffolk GOP leader and State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cromarty, 89, of Lindenhurst, an Army Air Forces captain and bombardier; Dominic Deluca, 85, of Islip, a recipient of the Purple Heart and five Bronze Stars; Cpl. Dennis O'Doherty, 85, of Sayville, who has five Bronze Stars; and his next-door neighbor, Bill Venegas, 84, a former member of the Merchant Marines.

A Merchant Marine flag waved in the wind with those of the other services and veterans' groups, and many American flags. Retired Army Lt. Col. Melody Thomas noted the Merchant Marines lost the highest percentage of personnel of any service in the war: One out of every 26 who went to sea was killed, she said. In the largest single-day amphibious invasion recorded - about 150,000 troops from several Allied countries - she said 10,000 Allied troops were killed or wounded that day.

The ceremony was put together by the Islip Veterans Service Organization, which this year welcomed home eight local veterans; and the town, through Councilman Gene Parrington, a Vietnam veteran.

"D-Day was one of the great moments in American history, a good-versus-evil confrontation," said Islip Supervisor Phil Nolan, whose father, the late Phil Nolan Sr., was an Army Air Forces veteran of World War II.