This is a story about four canceled lives, and saying "aye-aye" when called to serve.
Four Altoonans from two families - an uncle and his nephew and two brothers - killed in war.
Their stories are just a few of the hundreds from the 455 lost service members whose names are on brass plaques in a memorial to the city's war dead and missing since World War I.
Dedication of the memorial in a plot next to the Altoona Water Authority's new administration building downtown is today.
Nick the elder
Nick Cancilla was only in the service eight months before shipping out with the Second Marine Division, according to his brother Frank, 88, of Altoona.
Nick was part of the invasion of Tarawa in the Pacific in 1943.
There was a miscalculation, and they went in at low tide. The amphibious vehicles and boats got hung up on the coral reefs, forcing the Marines to go through the surf for a thousand yards to make the beach.
About a thousand didn't reach it. Among them was Nick, who was just 18.
"There were so many bodies they couldn't identify them all," Frank said, but Nick's body was among those identified.
He was buried there and although the government asked the family after the war if they wanted the body disinterred and returned to the states, Frank said their mother said to leave him where he was.
Nick had played football at Keith Junior High, dated lots of girls and hung around with lots of kids, Frank said.
"He was a jolly fellow," Frank said. "He didn't have a care."
He quit high school at 17 to go into the service, despite his parents' disapproval.
"He was going to be a glorified Marine," Frank said. "More or less gung ho."
Frank himself, two years older but more of a homebody, joined the Navy and eventually became a helmsman on a Landing Craft Control Boat. He steered the lead boat for the invasions of Leyte and Luzon, also in the Pacific.
He learned of Nick's death while in the states, at Little Creek, Va., after the expiration of a measles quarantine.
He called home and an aunt from New York who answered the phone told him about Nick.
Frank unsuccessfully sought permission from his commanding officer to go home. Eventually, he gave him a three-day pass with permission to travel no more than 100 miles from base.
"He said you're on your own after that," Frank said.
Once home, he telegraphed to ask for a couple more days to help his mom with paperwork. The commanding officer denied it, but Frank stayed anyway.
His commanding officer never said anything about him being late when he returned.
Nick the younger
Frank Cancilla's son Nick - named after the uncle who died in World War II - enrolled at Penn State Altoona because he wanted to be an engineer. But he didn't like a couple courses and said he was going to drop out.
When his dad warned him that he'd get drafted, Nick said, "If it has to be, it has to be."
Nick dropped out and got a job driving a truck for Blair Electric Co., ferrying supplies to job sites. Five months later, the draft notice came.
Nick didn't like it, but he didn't have a particularly strong opinion about the war, one way or another.
He entered the U.S. Navy and became a gunner's mate, manning the forward weapon on a river patrol boat in Vietnam.
Enemy snipers sometimes would shoot at the waterline, which would sink the river boats, but the Navy started lining the hulls with self-sealing foam, which helped, Frank said.
A rocket hit the radar on Nick's boat and a piece of the radar equipment hit the back of Nick's head on March 26, 1969. He died before he reached a hospital.
The Navy gave the family the option of naming a sailor from his outfit to escort the body back home. The Navy declined to transport the sailor, who was 100 miles away, so he hitchhiked along jungle roads to get where he needed to be.
Back home, he stood guard over the casket for three days.
Losing a son was worse than losing a brother, Frank said.
He learned about his son while at work in the shoe factory in town. A Navy messenger had gone to his house and talked to his wife, and his wife had given the messenger the shoe factory phone number.
The messenger called and when a receptionist fetched Frank, the messenger said he was wanted at home for something to do with the Navy.
"You're telling me my son has been killed," Frank re-called telling the messenger.
"To be outright, yes, that's why I'm here," the man replied.
Frank's boss, worried he'd have an accident on the way home, berated the phone receptionist for giving him the message.
The Navy furnished the casket and delivered the body to Santella's Funeral Home. But when the family went to the home "we were in shock," Frank said. "The casket was so cheap, and the body was just stuffed in."
They said "no way," and got a proper casket from Santella's, telling the funeral director to keep the other one for some needy case. They later learned Santella provided the cheap casket for the burial of a homeless veteran.
They buried Nick in civilian clothes.
"He hated the Navy clothes," Frank said.
Joe
Joe Iaia (pronounced like the letter "i" spoken twice) liked his clothes, according to his brother Leo Iaia, 81, of Altoona.
"Dressed beautiful," Leo said. "A gentleman."
He paid their sister Annie to iron his shirts.
He didn't have a steady girlfriend, but liked to go on dates and play cards.
He was drafted into the Army, but it must not have been easy for him. Once when he was home on furlough, the family was eating supper at their house in Pleasant Valley.
Leo was still in grade school.
"All of a sudden, [Joe] bust out bawling," Leo said.
Leo never learned why, but when that furlough ended, Joe shipped overseas.
Leo never saw him again.
They got a letter from a priest in France that Joe, a private first class, had been killed.
"We figured it was Normandy," Leo said.
The family got a telegram and a Purple Heart from the government, but no details. A notice at the funeral home stated that he was killed "somewhere in France."
They buried him there.
Albert
Albert Iaia was different.
"He wouldn't take nothing from nobody," Leo said of his brother.
He broke a car window once with his fist, according to Leo's wife, Joan.
Even at supper with his family, he made sure he got what he wanted. "Don't nobody grab that food till I get my share," is how Leo remembers it.
Albert was well-built, said Frank Benfatta, 88, Altoona, president of the Altoona American Legion post named for the Iaia brothers.
Albert enlisted in the Marines with Tony LePore, who became Leo's brother-in-law after the war, when he married their sister.
Albert initially wanted the Army, but LePore talked him out of it, Leo said.
Albert, a private first class, died after being wounded at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific in November 1943. A grenade laid his left side open, said Leo, who had trouble talking at times because of emotion.
Albert was a heavy machine gunner.
"The [Japanese] went after the machine gunners," Leo said.
Afterward, Albert lay on the beach with the other wounded, waiting for a ship to take them away, while Japanese snipers in trees fired at them, Leo said.
He died on a ship on the way to Pearl Harbor.
A priest gave him last rites, and he died with a smile, according to a letter the priest sent to his mother, Leo said.
Their brother Jimmy learned of Albert's death from LePore, when LePore reached the Philippines.
"Where's Al?" Jimmy asked.
"Al got it," LePore said.
Their mother signed both times for the telegrams that told of her sons' deaths. She had heart attacks after that and died in 1947.
"Of a broken heart," Joan said.
Leo can imagine Albert fighting and getting killed.
"Maybe he ran after the Japs," he said.
He can't picture it for Joe.
"So calm and collected," he said.
Their brother John was also in the service but Leo didn't make it. He quit school during the Korean War to enter, but didn't get further than a test in Cumberland, Md.
"They stopped me," Leo said. "They gave me an envelope."
It was from Altoona-area Congressman Jimmy Van Zandt, and it included instructions for him to take the envelope to his draft board. When he did, the board told him he wasn't going into the service, because the family had provided four sons already.
A lieutenant commander told him "you go ahead and go home." And that was that.
He was angry. But he's alive.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.
