Local Navy deckhand, family recall service, eventful lifetime
Marasco, 96, served in the Navy during WWII
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When Walter Marasco was in his mid-teens, he was living with a family in Riggles Gap, one of several foster children.
One day, he put all his belongings into a little red wagon, and walked down the dirt road about a mile to the Moser family farm. He'd become friends with their sons.
The Mosers were kind, and despite having a dozen kids of their own, they asked whether he'd like to be taken in. Walter agreed -- leading to his eventual adoption.
That story seems to be the central fact of Walter Marasco's life, as perceived by his children, two of whom talked with the Mirror this week, after a reader suggested writing about Walter, now 96, for Veterans Day. He served in the Navy during World War II.
"'I can't believe I could get everything I owned into that little red wagon,'" daughter, Christine Campbell, 68, recalled him saying.
"I don't know how I feel about that," Campbell said. Sometimes it makes her cry a little.
Because her father didn't grow up in a family that remained whole, and because he refrained from talking much about himself, his children had to piece his story together, according to Campbell and her brother Brian, 67.
"I feel like I'm missing a lot," Campbell said.
The recounting that she and Brian were able to provide, with some assistance from Walter, suggests a picture from further back than the second quarter of the 20th century, when Walter's life began.
There's a lot the family simply doesn't know, Campbell said.
Born in 1927
Walter Marasco was born in Altoona on Aug. 14, 1927, son of Carmela Marasco. She wasn't married.
When Walter was 2, he was living with his mom on Crawford Avenue in Altoona, along with another family, according to the 1930 census. Carmela was listed as a servant.
Born in Lock Haven in 1904, Carmela was the daughter of immigrants from Calabria, Italy.
Walter has an indistinct memory from later of living with his mother near railroad tracks near Roaring Spring, probably around McKee, according to Campbell.
Carmela eventually gave Walter up as a young child because she was unable to care for him, Campbell said, citing a conversation she had with an aunt.
He didn't talk about his mother much, although he said she was short in stature, Campbell said.
Campbell said while her father's given name is Walter, his friends call him Jim. That came beginning with his arrival at a foster home of some sort that her father identified as "Boys Town," Campbell said.
One of the people in charge addressed him as Walter, and he objected, Campbell said. Asked what he'd like to be called, her father said "Jimmy."
Entering the Navy
Her father entered the Navy in 1943, at 15 or 16. The Mosers may have had to sign for him because he was so young.
Walter probably went to boot camp in Binghamton, N.Y., according to Brian.
Boot camp wasn't that hard, Walter said this week.
After boot camp, he went to Norfolk, Va., becoming a deckhand on the USS Bernadou, a destroyer built in Philadelphia in 1918.
The Bernadou received five service stars for its actions during World War II, according to the children.
Based on their recollections of what their father said and based on their research, the Bernadou spent time during the war in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific.
Campbell remembers her father saying that in the Mediterranean, he got close to his ancestral homeland of Italy.
He also got seasick, she said.
While in the service, his father was reprimanded for writing a letter that could have disclosed the location of the Bernadou.
At one point, a torpedo grazed the Bernadou, Brian wrote. "(His father) did not know the full extent of the damage," Brian stated.
He dismissed that incident as minor, according to Campbell.
Her father also talked about a depth charge run, "but they didn't get the sub," Campbell said.
While still in the service, but possibly after the war, Walter was in the Midwest, traveling across the country, and saw wheat fields blowing in the wind, Campbell said. They looked to him like waves on the ocean, she said, recalling a conversation with her father.
Despite joining the Navy and serving from 1943 to 1946, her father always had a fear and a "deep respect" for the water, Campbell said.
After he turned 18, her father visited his mother in Dauphin County, where she was living, now married, according to Campbell.
He went with a couple of his Moser step-brothers, Campbell said.
Starting his family
Walter married the former Lorraine Seymore sometime between 1946 and 1951. When their children, who included Doak, the oldest, born in 1953, and Linda, the youngest, born in 1959, were growing up, their father was very strict, according to Campbell.
Everything had to be in its proper place in the house, she said.
"(But) he gave us the best childhood in that area," Campbell stated.
That included an early adoption of TV, she said.
Her father worked for Sylvania, starting when the plant was located on Eighth Avenue, around 29th Street, in Altoona, and again after the company moved to Pleasant Valley. He began in the cafeteria before the war, then drove a truck afterward.
After retiring, he drove a bus for Blue & White for a time. He retired in the 1980s.
"He always provided," Campbell said. "He was always responsible for taking care of us and our home."
The Mosers, who had provided a "solid and stable" upbringing for their father, gave each of their children an acre of ground along what is now Moser Road in Riggles Gap, so they could build homes, according to Campbell.
Walter, whom the Mosers permitted to keep his original last name, was the second child to receive such a gift.
The Moser children built those homes cooperatively, with various members, including Walter, having the needed masonry, carpentry, electrical and plumbing skills, according to Campbell.
Walter and Lorraine, who died in 2010, designed the house where Brian and Walter now live, Campbell said.
It's a small house, with front windows that look out on an upsloping meadow, with a dirt track that arcs up from the road.
Brian brings Walter to dinner at Campbell's nearby house nearly every evening.
In talking with their father in recent years, the children have learned "not to overstep," Campbell said.
"I don't want to put him in an uncomfortable position," she said. "On how things fell into place for him -- or didn't."
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.