Johanna Richards, Pete Simpson and Luke Patterson stand behind the vets whose military history they presented at First Baptist Church: Thomas Reilly (front, left to right), Jack Morris and Eugene Richardson..
To honor Veterans Day this year, the borough’s American Legion Post 38 hosted “Haddonfield Salutes a Century of Service” at the First Baptist Church on Nov. 19.
The event honored three local World War II veterans, and three Haddonfield Memorial High School students presented profiles of and interviews with each one as an audience of other vets and families looked on.
Lt. Commander Thomas Reilly, a 99-year-old Navy vet, had his life story told by junior Johanna Richards. She first learned about the presentations after volunteering at Dancing with the Blind, where she met American Legion Post 38 Commander Rodney Thomas.
“When I first met Mr. Reilly, I knew he was going to be a great man,” Richards said, “but nothing prepared me for how extraordinary he really is.”
Reilly was born on Christmas nearly a century ago to immigrant parents who left Philadelphia and relocated to Camden, where he grew up. In 1943 – nearly two years after the U.S. had joined the war – Reilly joined the Navy at just 17, after completing high school in 90 days so he could enlist.
He spent the war on a tanker carrying gasoline from New Jersey, at one point experiencing one of the most terrifying moments of his life when a depth charge – an explosive device – was dropped below his ship.
“While talking about this experience with Mr. Reilly, he never once said a negative thing,” Richards marveled. “He never once regretted going out there … despite it being a horrible thing. He took it and made something out of it.
“He made a life experience, a story, an experience that turned him into the man he is today, not something that’s supposed to be forgotten.”
Reilly returned home after the war and eventually settled in Haddonfield, where he was an English teacher at the high school. He married Dorcas, with whom he spent almost 60 years with until her death in 2018, and they had two children together. Reilly now has four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Chief Petty Officer Thelbert “Pug” Snyder, a 102-year-old who also served in the Navy, was profiled by Pete Simpson. Snyder was not able to make the presentation, but his great-grandson, Haddonfield High freshman student Jack Morris, attended for him.
Simpson recounted that Snyder was raised in Clayton by his father and stepmother. He graduated from Clayton High School at 17 years old and enlisted in the Navy in 1940 with his best friend, Harold Costill. Costill was immediately accepted, but Snyder – at under 100 pounds – didn’t meet the weight requirement.
“He said, and I quote, ‘We went down to Chestnut and Second Street, and I had bananas and milk and bananas and milk and bananas and milk,” Simpson noted of Snyder. “And he doesn’t know how many bananas and how much milk he drank, but when he went back, they took him.”
Snyder and Costill were separated after enlisting, and the latter was killed on the USS West Virginia durng the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Snyder was deployed to the South Pacific for aircraft work.
“Pug doesn’t know how he died,” Simpson said of Costill, “but he said he died bravely.”
Snyder, meanwhile, downplayed his own service.
“He said I wasn’t a hero,'” Simpson told the audience, “even though you know he really was.”
Snyder eventually became the owner of a local general store and trailer park, retiring in his 90’s. He still lives independently.
Luke Patterson’s presentation focused on 2nd Lt. Eugene J. Richardson Jr., a 100-year-old who served with the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed group of Black Air Force pilots. Patterson is a member of the Civil Air Patrol, so he was excited to talk to the only pilot of the three honorees.
Richardson was born and raised in Ohio with 10 siblings, eventually moving to Camden at 16. He was inspired to fly when he was just 5, after his father took him to an air show. While Richardson couldn’t take flying lessons in high school, he learned everything he could about aviation in whatever way he could.
“He said he read all the books he could find about flying,” Patterson noted of his subject. “He worked on cars in an auto shop, and in that auto shop, they had a broken swivel chair … He would read about a maneuver or a technique in his books, and then he would sit in that swivel chair and pretend like he was flying a plane.”
Richardson knew the military would be one of his only chances to fly, so he tested to become a pre-aviation cadet, registering for the draft at 17. He passed the test on his second try, then shipped out right after he turned 18. After basic training, he headed to Tuskegee, Alabama – where the Tuskegee Airmen were based – to learn flying.
Unlike other men in the airmen’s group, Richardson had not yet completed high school, and the training was rigorous.
“It was very important that they succeeded, because even one person not succeeding, they thought that would reflect on the entire group,” Patterson explained. “And he said the slogan they had was ‘Collaborate to graduate,’ which meant everyone was working together to help each other succeed.”
Richardson finished flight training near the end of the war in Europe. He left the military in 1946 and had to do a career switch: Airlines didn’t hire black pilots until the 1950s. He went back to school, got a doctorate in education, and served as a principal in the Philadelphia school system.
