Reggie Charron made Veterans Day 2020 very special for his fellow veterans, his town

by Dan McClelland

Reginald “Reggie” Charron, a Piercefield resident who turned 99 on October 3, made today- Veterans Day 2020- very special for many veterans of his town and their families.

Reggie honored his deceased brother Gerard and 95 of his fellow World War II veterans, many of whom were his friends from town, by having a large bronze plaque engraved with all their names. It now stands in Piercefield’s town park on the small twin-peninsula overlooking Raquette Flow.

Reggie collected all the names and paid for the beautiful bronze piece to be made and then donated it to the town whose highway crew prepared and polished a huge granite boulder where the plaque was affixed. Jay Rust did much of the polishing, Reggie noted.

Reggie compiled the list by contacting the families of all the veterans he knew from Piercefield.

Including Reggie’s name there are 97 names on the memorial.

It took Reggie three different companies to finally get the plaque he wanted. In all he figures he spent somewhere over $30,000 on his project, adding: “-And I felt good doing it!”

On this special day and time of remembrance of all veterans Reggie encourages all local residents to visit the new monument to pay tribute and homage to the veterans of that war.

The memorial is especially meaningful to Reggie as his brother was killed in the war’s famous Battle of the Bulge in Germany. Gerard’s birthday was Veterans Day- today.

Reggie’s monument can be seen, along with the American Flag flying high, by passersby on the Piercefield bridge crossing the Raquette River on Route 3. A close inspection of it reveals wonderful craftsmanship.

Flanking the monument and the flag is a World War II- vintage machine gun donated by Reggie’s friend Paul Thomas.

The park, with its spectacular views of the river and the mountains beyond every season of the year, is a popular local spot for fishing, picnicking and the launching of kayaks, canoes and small fishing boats.

After a tour of his monument we followed Reggie to the house of his friend and next door neighbor, Carol Fuller, for an interview.

Reggie has lived in the house where he now lives for about 40 years. Carol has been his neighbor there since 1981.

Reggie was born in Quebec, Canada and came here with his family as a five year old. His father landed a job at Piercefield’s International Paper mill and he said he enjoyed growing up in that town, making many friends as a boy. “But I think I was a mean little boy!” he joked, remembering the many pranks he played.

Reggie is a jokester, it's obvious.

He attended school at the Piercefield schoolhouse which is where the town offices are situated now. He remembers many trips to the principal’s office during his school years.

One day he left school on his own volition but before he got home his teacher had dispatched some of the older students to go and catch him.

Piercefield was a busy little town when he was growing up. It boasted several stores.

“There were many company homes there when the mill was in operation. There was one doctor, Dr. Bury. He was a good doctor.”

Carol’s house was Dr. Bury’s house. Reggie’s house was the doctor’s office.

When his father died at the plant a short time after their arrival, Reggie’s mother raised her four children as a single parent.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 as a teenager and was a communications specialist on the telegraph using the dots and dashes, or as Reggie said, “dits and dots” of Morse Code.

He admitted he became very proficient reading and recording coded messages. “You had to be good!” He noted that he could take the coded messages down by hand and also with a machine, when the dots and dashes came too quickly.

Reggie started in the service in the tank corp and later switched to communications. He was attached to the 38th division in the final days of the war.

He remembers vividly the trip overseas from California to the South Pacific on board a not so sea-worthy ship. It was one of the American fleet's smaller boats “and not a very good one!”

The trip took several months because for much of the time there had to observe radio silence and frequently kill the ship's engines for fear of detection by Japanese war ships.

The large waves of the Pacific also pounded the tiny American craft and many of his shipmates were sea sick all the time, he remembered. Reggie escaped seasickness.

On the way over their slow boat narrowly missed a torpedo from a warship and fortunately for him and his fellow soldiers it was the last projectile that the Japanese craft had. “We could see it coming. Luckily, it was their last!”

Telegraph operators were often mobile and it made for tough communications in many remote places.

“It wasn’t like the nice phones today. You had to work like heck to get the messages out!”

His ship first landed at a U.S. base in New Guinea.

“We were on one side of an island and the Japs were on the other.”

Large mountains separated the two, Reggie remembers.

Reggie and his division were on their way to the Japanese Islands to invade the enemy when the atomic bombs were dropped that ended the war.

“We were ready to go right into Japan when they dropped the bombs!” They were making their way through the Philippine Islands when the bombs were dropped.

He said they were told to expect mass casualties had the land invasion occurred.

After the war Reggie found employment at the General Motors plant at Rochester N.Y. The typing he learned during the war was a big help to him in his new jobs there, he noted.

He retired from the auto manufacturer in 1980, after holding many positions. Reggie said the company offered him promotions to other plants around the country but he liked where he was and the people he worked with there.

“There were 5,000 employees and everyone called me ‘Reggie.’”

“GM paid me a lot of money and I’m still getting some.”

He and his late wife, Doris, returned to Piercefield full-time after his retirement. They have three children, Kim, Eric and Leslie. Leslie currently lives in England, where she was the chief security officer with Reuters News Service. Her husband, according to Reggie, was a pilot for the Royal Family. Eric lives in Scottsville, N.Y. in the family home where he was raised. Kim lives on Lake Ontario.

Eric visits his dad regularly and they often play golf here together.

Reggie’s regular golf partner is Bucky Kentile. Reggie gave up driving this year so Bucky is often his wheels around town. They recently made a visit to Buck-A-Year hunting club on Litchfield Park here.

Carol also drives Reggie to errands and appointments around the Tupper area.

During his war years and the years following the war, he said he wasn’t a fan of war general and later the 34th U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The popular motto of his campaign for president “I like Ike,” never sat well with him. “I didn’t like Ike!”

As the European commander of the war effort many lost their lives on his watch unnecessarily, Mr. Charron said he believes. He also chastised General Eisenhower for his treatment of captured enemies.

“He was not a good general!”

Mr. Charron said his brother Gerard was all set to be discharged at Christmas when he was called into battle at The Bulge- where he lost his life.

He blames Eisenhower for poor planning in that strategic battle.

Reggie prides himself at working hard his entire life and he figures that has contributed to his long life. He still does his own yard work and sometimes some of Carol’s too.

Reggie and his wife wintered in Florida for years in their cozy double-wide trailer in a park in Lady Lake about four miles from The Villages and Reggie continued going after his wife’s death. He left last week for the winter and looks forward to playing more golf with friends there this winter.

Reggie was one of the first World War II veterans from this area to be celebrated by the North Country Honor Flight organization with a trip to the nation’s capitol and public honors there about a decade ago.

It made such an impact on him that he talked it among several of his friends here like Walter “Bud” Hauser, who were also honored by the veterans group on later trips to Washington, D.C.

Reggie called it “a very nice program” and he said he loved the tours of the various war monuments there. “People were fighting to shake my hand! The people were so nice!”

Editor’s note: our thanks to Carol Fuller for putting us on to this story and for her help sharing it with our readers today.