WWII mariners in search of benefits
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Wilbur Driscoll, a member of the Mon Valley chapter of the Merchant Marine, salutes during the dedication of the World War II U.S. Merchant Marine Monument in Butler's Diamond Park. -
Memorial Committee chairman Nathan DeSantis reads the names of members of the U.S. Merchant Marine who were killed in the line of duty during the dedication of a monument to them Friday in Butler.
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They're in their 80s and 90s now, but veterans of the U.S. Merchant Marine who served in every theater of World War II are still waiting for what many of them say is their due: respect and money.
They say they've received little of the first and none of the second in the 65 years since the war ended.
But in Butler County on Friday, one local mariners group won at least a partial victory in a fight for recognition that has lasted twice as long as the war itself.
At an hour-long ceremony in downtown Butler, a marble and granite monument was dedicated to the mariners next to the county's World War II memorial in Diamond Park. The mariners had spent nine years lobbying the private group that raised the funds for the war memorial, asking for equal billing on the front with the five branches of the military.
The organizers refused because the mariners were civilians, not members of the armed forces. When the memorial was dedicated in 2004, it listed the mariners on the back along with two dozen other groups that aided the war effort.
So the Merchant Marine veterans campaigned for their own monument on adjacent land, then raised $10,000 to build it.
"We belong on the main monument, but they would not correct their mistake," said Nathan DiSantis, 89, chairman of the monument committee. "But I'm not thinking of that right now. I think what we've done is fabulous."
A certain feistiness is typical of elderly mariners -- civilians who transported troops and materiel across the oceans and suffered mightily from attacks by German U-boats and the Luftwaffe in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and from the Japanese Navy in the Pacific.
Adding to their sense of injustice is the fact that they did not receive the same financial benefits as members of the military. For seven years, various measures have been introduced in Congress to pay them, but they've all stalled. The newest one -- called The Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act of 2009 -- would pay them $1,000 a month. It passed the House last May and is now before the Senate's Veterans Affairs Committee.
First Published May 30, 2010 12:00 am
