...after Santo's (left) story was published, Rita contacted me suggesting I add something about Louis (right), so I prepared this document and will send it soon to the library along with a dagger artifact.
Louis Bencriscutto
1919 – 1985
Louis served in the Navy onboard the U.S.S. Warren, a troop ship, in the Pacific from 1943-1945. His brother, Santo, was in the Army in Europe, and his brothers Fred & Vince also served during WWII.
A radar technician, Louis manned his station using the new technology to help keep his troop ship safe from enemy air attack. Near the end of the war, just before the atomic bomb was dropped, the U.S.S. Warren was under kamikaze assault but survived. In one miraculous incident, a bomb was dropped right on top of the radar station with Louis present, but the bomb exploded up instead of down and Louis was spared.
During a less dramatic incident, Louis, an avid swimmer and cliff diver in Racine, often as a boy frequenting Quarry Lake Park, dove off his ship into a school of barracuda and had to be saved. That breach of protocol cost Louis six days in the brig living on only bread and water.
In another amusing but revealing anecdote, Louis, newly married to Adeline Catapano, in setting up their first apartment Adeline wanted them to buy an expensive stereo console, but Louis, having learned that the radar cathode ray tube was being adapted into television, told her that soon they would have a much more modern form of entertainment in their home!
The Japanese dagger artifact was brought back from the Pacific Theater by Louis after the war.
