Plankowner
Posts: 5024
Location: Gulfport, MS | Subject: We lost one of those "Angels in Lead Boots"...
... that Dex wrote about several years ago.
Charles E. McDonald Jr., 91, died July 1, 2007. Visitation will be from 2 to 4 p.m. today at Lemon Bay Funeral Home in Englewood. A Mass will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Raphael's Church in Englewood. A graveside service will be Monday at the Massachusetts U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs Cemetery in Bourne, Mass. Charles E. McDonald Jr. passed away on Sunday after a brief illness. He was born in Winthrop, Mass., the son of the late Charles E. McDonald Sr. and Mary E. (Mahoney) McDonald. A graduate of Winthrop High School, Mr. McDonald was a Navy veteran of World War II, with service in Europe and the South Pacific. He participated in D-Day, a crewman aboard an LST carrying tanks to the beaches at Normandy. Prior to the war, he served aboard the Battleship USS Wyoming with the rank of chief bosun, during which time he piped aboard President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also was an expert hard hat diver, graduating from training school in Bayonne, N.J. During his service, he was at the scene of the recovery of the crew of the sunken submarine USS Squalus (SS-192) off the coast of New Hampshire. He retired from the U.S. Naval Reserve with the rank of chief warrant officer. Prior to the Navy, he was employed in Boston Harbor on the Boston Tow Boat Co. After the war, he began employment at the Boston Naval Shipyard, where he rose from laborer, rigger and foreman to superintendent of Shop 72 adjacent to the USS Constitution. In that capacity he supervised the recovery of wreckage from the Oct. 4, 1960, crash into Winthrop Bay of Eastern Airlines Flight 375 in which 62 passengers died. The recovery operation led to the finding that a flight of starlings had clogged the engines aboard the plane. He retired from the Boston Naval Shipyard after 35 years with the position of group master, the highest civilian post at the now closed shipyard. One of his proudest achievements was supervision of the re-rigging of the USS Constitution. An archival recording of an interview with him by the USS Constitution Museum in Charlestown was taped in which he detailed his advocacy for and the method of re-rigging the nation's oldest commissioned warship. Mr. McDonald leaves his wife and high school sweetheart, Gladys (Ballou) McDonald, 93; a daughter, Eleanor Padilla and her husband, Victorino, of Englewood; and a son, Charles III and his wife, Kathleen, of Lynnfield, Mass. He also leaves two granddaughters, Michele Kenny and her husband, Michael, of Fort Myers and Ellen McDonald of Lynnfield; and a great-granddaughter, Samantha Nolet of Fort Myers. He also leaves three stepgrandchildren and seven stepgreat-grandchildren. He was the brother of the late Joseph McDonald of Winthrop. Funeral arrangements in Florida are by Lemon Bay Funeral Home and Cremation Services, Englewood. Arrangements in Winthrop, Mass., are by the O'Maley Funeral Home, Atlantic Street. Donations in his memory may be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
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We lost one of those "Angels in Lead Boots"...
