Memorial Day Address at Lakeview Cemetery
On Monday May 31, 2021 residents of Wayland gathered at Lakeview Cemetery to commemorate Memorial Day in a ceremony planned by Wayland’s Public Ceremonies Committee (PCC). The Ceremony, witnessed by hundreds of Wayland’s residents lining the hill around the Bowl, was moving and enriching. Richard Turner, Chair of the PCC, led the ceremony introducing the participants. Both the Middle School and High School bands offered music including America the Beautiful and Echo Taps.
The Memorial Day Address was given by retiring High School History teacher, Kevin Delaney, who spoke of two young men who graduated from Wayland High School in 1940, eventually enlisted in the armed forces, served and died for their country. Mr. Delaney talked about life in Wayland for young Alfred Gelinas and George Fullick living on Pemberton Road and Damon Street. They joined the Army and Marines and were shipped to opposite ends of the world, one serving and dying in Italy, the other at Iwo Jima. Enlarged photographs of the two in uniform flanked a photograph of their eighth-grade graduating class. Mr. Delaney’s address and photographs follow here.
Memorial Day address by Kevin Delaney
Good morning.
There’s a photograph that comes to mind as late May rolls around the calendar. It’s not the acclaimed Iwo Jima Flag Raisers, or Matthew Brady’s shocking Gettysburg dead. No, instead it’s a routine yet poignant shot from the 1936 Cochituate School yearbook of the 8th-grade graduating class. On the school steps with diplomas proudly in-hand are 17 boys in dark blazers and white trousers, 10 girls in lacy white dresses, and a stern, unsmiling Principal, Miss Kerr, at their center, holding a fresh bouquet of flowers one of the students most certainly just handed her but that didn’t appear to have much cheered her up.
Anticipating summertime freedom and perhaps pondering their more distant futures that had yet to be written but which we now know, the gang includes eleven 14-year-old boys who would go on to serve in the armed forces during WWII. Two of them wouldn’t make it home, Alfred Gelinas and George Fullick.
At the very moment the photographer took that 1936 shot, unbeknownst to them, their futures were being directed by forces well beyond their control. In a belligerent violation of the Versailles Treaty, Hitler sent his troops into the Rhineland just that March. He also ordered his new air force, the Luftwaffe, to bomb the Spanish town of Guernica in a brutal practice run of what would happen throughout Europe a few short years later.
As those 8th graders posed, Mussolini celebrated Italy’s recent German alliance, dubbing it the Axis. Meanwhile in Japan, militarists were busy assassinating remaining moderate statesmen and preparing for the murderous 1937 invasion of China.
Just a few weeks before the June photograph, those 8th graders also marked this somber day, perhaps even standing on this very spot amidst scores of veterans from what was then simply called the World War. They all knew that Memorial Day was much more than the front-side bookend of summer, the unofficial onset of the vacation season. Four Wayland World War I soldiers’ deaths made it plainly clear that Memorial Day was, and is, our national day of reflection, a day to remember fallen Americans like Cochituate’s own Alfred Gelinas and George Fullick, classmates who had tragic dates with destiny, each making the ultimate sacrifice to defend our precious democracy.
Today I will tell you their stories.
Alice Moran Gelinas got an early Christmas present in 1922 with the arrival of her first child, a baby boy, who entered the world on December 10th. They named him Alfred Joseph Jr, his father’s pride and joy. The young family lived on Pemberton Rd, and dad, a WW1 vet, chauffeured for a private family, earning enough to own his own home. Alfred Jr. was soon joined by a brother Richard in 1926, who tragically died just 4 years later, the same year his sister Dorothy was born.
Alfred grew up in a Cochituate bursting with the children of hard working folks who enjoyed many of the same pastimes area kids do today: playing ball at the Cochituate field, swimming in the lake, fishing at Dudley Pond, and palling around with the neighborhood gang, which for him surely included his classmate George Fullick, who lived about a baseball throw away on Damon St.
George came along just a couple of months after Alfred, born on February 15th, 1923, to Annie Fullick, an Englishwoman by birth and WWI nurse, and her husband, George Sr. A noted landscape designer who owned several greenhouses in town, Mr. Fullick worked hard so that his children could enjoy themselves in small town America. And like all kids, George loved to play, so told me his younger sister back in 2003, the late Jennie Fullick Pinkul. Jennie lit up recalling her big brother’s youth, of hot afternoons at Baldwin Pond learning how to swim, of the ski jump George erected one winter on Shaw’s Hill, of baseball games, and of the time when Dad taught George how to pole vault and ended up breaking his arm. George Sr. saw to it that his son joined the boy scouts as well, and was especially fond of the retreats at Bolton’s Camp Resolute. George eventually earned his Life Scout rank and became a camp counselor. And he whistled everywhere he went.
As the Depression gripped the country, Alfred and George moved into their teenage years, growing into successful and talented young men with lives full of promise ahead of them. One can imagine Alfred and little sister Dorothy huddled around their radio set listening to Abbott & Costello, Dick Tracy, and the Green Hornet, or wandering around the neighborhood watching the New Deal workers upgrading the Cochituate water pipes or seeing dozens of WPA men constructing a modern Wayland high school just in time for his grade to enjoy.
We know much more about George Fullick’s youth. As was the case for so many American families, the 1930s were hard times in the Fullick household. His father’s business suffered, and his mom’s health steadily declined, and she sadly passed away in 1940 when George was only 17. Despite these troubles, however, George continued to love to play. He was an active sportsman as a Wayland High School Warrior, and became quite a trombonist to boot. Swing was in the air, and George founded his own 7-member orchestra which played local dance halls, including a number of engagements at the Mansion Inn. George was cool well before the term came into popular use, styling in his Palm Beach suit and colorful stockings.
By the early 1940’s, the two young men were drawing wages in area factories. After three years at Wayland High School, Alfred landed a job at a Telechron machine shop making clocks in Ashland, and after graduating in 1940, George took a job at a Framingham woolen mill. However, world events would interrupt plans of their own choosing, as the attack on Pearl Harbor shocked Alfred, George and their pals. Nine months later George quit his job and joined the Marine Corps, and around that same time Alfred signed on with the Army infantry. One would fight in the Pacific, the other in Europe.
Alfred Gelinas enlisted in February, 1943, and not long after said goodbye to his mom, dad, and sister, a departure that surely included tears and heartfelt promises to be safe. None of them could have imagined that their worst fears would eventually be realized, and that when he left for Fort Devens that day, they would never see each other again.
Following basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, Alfred and the 180th Regiment of the 45th Infantry, the Thunderbird Division, shipped out in late spring, 1943. After further training in North Africa, the 45th prepared for Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, where over the succeeding two months the men first experienced intense combat. Once Sicily was nearly liberated, orders arrived for the invasion of Italy itself, attacking at a place Alfred had probably never heard of before: Anzio.
After landing in central Italy about 40 miles south of Rome in early 1944, the Thunderbirds were quickly bogged down due to fierce German resistance and counter-attacks, forcing the men into a system of trenches more akin to the first than this second World War. The initially surprised Germans hit back with eight divisions for four straight months before the Americans could break out. But Alfred wouldn’t join his mates during the subsequent liberation of Rome, for like 1000’s of his comrades, he was tragically hit. The official record includes a simple hospital admission card that reads, “Artillery shell fragments; body, generally” “Type of discharge: Died”. This was February 22nd, Alfred had just turned 21 years old.
While Alfred fought in the European Theater, thousands of miles away his old classmate George Fullick was gearing up for the Island Hopping campaign. After volunteering for the Marines in October of ‘42, George trained on Parris Island and was assigned to the Motor Corps of the 4th Marine Division. The world of Wayland must have grown smaller and smaller as he traveled across the country to Camp Pendleton, California, for final preparations. Before he left, he promised younger sister Jennie that, if offered, George would consider joining the Marine Corps band rather than a combat unit. And George was asked to play trombone for that band, considered the offer, and declined. Before shipping out, he was given a final seven-day furlough, so Jennie wired him some money to come home, and saved a few bucks for one last grand night out on the town as well. It just so happened that the Tommy Dorsey Band featuring Frank Sinatra, was playing at Waltham’s Totem Pole Club; what better send-off could a young musician ask for? Late that evening, Tommy Dorsey called out a dance for the GI’s soon shipping out and George grabbed Jennie for a spin. Dorsey noticed, and commented on George’s girlfriend. George corrected him by hollering, “I haven’t found one like my sister yet!” It was around this time that George confidentially told Jennie that if he should fall, he wanted to be buried with his buddies.
Upon returning to the west coast, George and the 4th Marines shipped out. The Island Hopping campaign first took Corporal Fullick to the Marshall Islands in late winter, 1944. After an 18 day journey from Hawaii, George experienced combat for the first time, taking two small but well-defended atolls. “The Fighting 4th then moved on to Saipan, the Japanese capital and stronghold of the Marianas Islands. The importance of the operation was certainly appreciated by all hands, as Saipan lay only 1500 miles from Tokyo, within B-29 range of all points in the Japanese home islands”. George’s buddy would later write in a letter, “[d]uring the darkest days on Saipan… we could always count on him to put a shell on the target without the slightest delay.”
Tinian was next for George and the 4th Marines. In the process of conquering the future base of the Enola Gay, George was among the 2,000 who earned their Purple Hearts, sustaining facial wounds during the attack.
Without a doubt, as George was convalescing he thought of the safety and comforts of home. Perhaps George was able to read a copy or two of the newly published Cochituate Jeep, the self-proclaimed “conveyor of news from the folks at home to their service men and women everywhere”. Were Number One, Volume One able to find him, he would’ve learned that Valentine Day sales were boosted 100% with the arrival of Benny Johnson’s new clerkettes, that the WHS basketball team was 4-3 with 4 games remaining “and still working that Weston jinx”, and that Mrs. Dorothy Robinson “received some lovely nylons as a gift from her husband Leland, in San Diego”. Meanwhile, Fathers Maguire and Tessier extended their greetings from St. Zepherin’s Church, and the Community Church’s Pastor David Angell reassured the troops that “we are doing all that we can back home to keep things in good order”, anticipating their homecoming. At the same time, Frank Burke was busily plowing 10 inches of newly fallen snow.
These snippets of small-town life during wartime are far more than inconsequential and seemingly irrelevant happenings; they are the reassuring remnants of everyday life that one hardly notices until he is so far away.
George soon returned to the 24th Marines and began preparing himself for February 19, 1945, the day the assault on Iwo Jima commenced. “At dawn on D-Day the Marines saw Iwo Jima for the first time. It was unlike any other island they had ever seen: it was a barren lump of volcanic sand and clay, treeless, craggy, and blistered with endless sand hummocks. Mount Suribachi loomed at the southern tip.” George and the rest of the 24th climbed onto their landing crafts, and with relatively little resistance, beached from 4:30-8:30 PM. “The beach wasn’t white, but black, and the vegetation which grew sparsely, was wilted, burned out, and colorless. It was as if”, one Marine later wrote, “Iwo Jima was meant to support not life, but death.” The treacherous terrain only made the going against an increasingly tenacious enemy even tougher.
For 14 days George and his fellow Marines fought to liberate the island, by when about 75% had been taken, including its strategic airfields. In the early darkness of March 5th, it started to rain lightly. Official reports suggest that it was a fairly quiet day for the 4th marines, except in the area of RCT 24, where heavy mortar and artillery fire was received constantly at night. The resulting casualties were moderate, including 3 dead and 8 wounded. For Corporal George W, Fullick Jr., this was the end. His pal, LT John Murray Fox later wrote to George Sr. and Jennie, describing “heavy opposition, [with] George right in the thick of it with his mortar. A Japanese shell landed beside him and pierced his heart…”
What went through George’s mind as his last moments expired? I have to believe it was of this place–Wayland–of the sights, smells, and sounds of home. Of the times he had as a boy with his pals like Alfred Gelinas, of his pop, of Jennie, and maybe soon seeing his mom Annie again. George’s heart stopped beating that day on a barren lump of volcanic rock some 10,000 miles from home. A few days later, Mr. Fullick went down to Gerald’s Store to get the newspaper and there waiting for him was a dreaded Western Union Telegram. “Don’t read it until you get home to Jennie”, his friend urged him. He folded the note and went home, bearing the worst news a parent can receive. Somehow he returned to work the next day, and later stated to fellow fathers at a Boy Scout meeting, “I have lost my son, so you’re going to have to share yours with me.” George Sr. now rests atop a hill here at Lakeview Cemetery, his son is with his buddies at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Hawaii. Halfway around the world, George’s 8th grade classmate, Alfred Gelinas, lies under a gleaming white marble cross at the American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy.
George Fullick’s and Alfred Gelinas’ deaths would leave irreparable voids in the lives of their fellow soldiers, friends, and families. They would not return to enjoy the fruits of post-war America; they would not go on to college on the GI Bill; they would not get married, start families, and add to the growing Baby Boom. They would not pass on their knowledge, experiences, and love to their sons the way their fathers did for them.
George gave us his all on Iwo Jima;
Alfred gave us his all at Anzio;
And some 400,000 men and women during the WWII years did the same.
In sum, there have been over 1,000,000 Georges and Alfreds in all of America’s wars, mostly fighting to protect this unique constitutional republic the Framers created some 230 years ago. As we reflect upon their premature and ultimate sacrifices, we must renew our commitment to that which they gave their all, for as we have seen both abroad and at home, democracy is gravely threatened by those eager to break through its long-established guardrails.
Democracy is fragile, and it is not inevitable.
So on this day, stroll through our local cemetery grounds, contemplate, and reflect on the stones etched with names begging to be remembered. And it is our calling on Memorial Day to cast special attention to those graves with crisp American flags and fresh geraniums and remember the George Fullicks and Alfred Gelinases of our nation. As you stare at the worn markers and touch the outlined letters of their names, consider Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1884 exhortation. He stated “Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death-of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring.”