Staff photo / Ed Runyan Joe Alessi Jr., left, stands with his son, Joe P. Alessi, while they hold a medal and photo album from his military service. Joe Alessi Jr. served during the Korean Conflict, while Joe P. Alessi spent 20 years in the military, retiring as lieutenant colonel after being deployed twice in support of the global war on terror.

YOUNGSTOWN — Joe Alessi Sr., who was born in Italy in 1899, began a string of nearly 100 years of Joe Alessis who served in the military.

He started the chain in 1916. It ended when third-generation soldier Joe P. Alessi of North Lima retired from the U.S. Army in 2014.

“You had three Joe Alessis in combat — during World War I, the Korean War and then the global war on terror,” Joe Alessi Jr., 89, of Youngstown, said.

The first Joe Alessi was drafted into the Italian Army during World War I. Italy was a U.S. ally at the time. He came to the United States in 1922, after the war ended.

“He went into the infantry, and he fought the Austrians and Germans up in the Alps. He was wounded and blown out of a trench,” his son, Joe Alessi Jr., said last week from his West Side home.

“He had shrapnel in his forehead and in his shoulder,” he said. The shrapnel remained in his head the rest of his life. After being injured, he served in the medical ambulatory corps in 1917.

Joe Alessi Jr., 89, of Youngstown, enlisted in the United States Army on June 30, 1949, after graduting from Salem High School.

He completed basic training and then went to Fort Belvoir in Virginia. He graduated from heavy equipment school and was shipped to Okinawa, Japan, on March 2, 1950. The Korean conflict began June 25, 1950.

His first assignment was in Kadena, Okinawa, where he was attached to the U.S. Air Force. His unit maintained an air strip there until April 1951. He was shipped to Kunsan, South Korea, where his unit used bulldozers, graders and other heavy equipment to build a landing strip for B-26 fighter bombers.

Most of his work involved operating a “dozer and pan,” which he used to clear land for the landing strip. He also operated graders, cranes and other types of heavy equipment.

In January 1952, he was shipped to Fort Leonardwood in Missouri, where he was honorably discharged Aug. 21, 1952. In all, he spent more than three years in the military — 22 months overseas and 19 months in combat.

When he returned home, he attended college in St. Louis, worked as a deck hand on river boats a short time, then came home to Salem. He worked 2 1/2 years there as a meat cutter in his father’s grocery store in Salem, Alessi’s Market.

He also worked about 15 years starting in 1955 as a Prudential Insurance salesman and then moved to Youngstown and worked for the Youngstown Water Department starting in 1970, retiring in 1994.

“While we were building the airstrip, South Korean units, combat infantry units, would come off of the line stood guard over us to make sure nobody could get to us while we were working,” he said.

“We would befriend these guys because they would spend like 30 days at a time.” He exchanged collar buttons with one of of the South Korean soldiers. “He was a young kid — about 15 or 16 years old but had already been in combat for several months,” he said.

THIRD GENERATION

His son, Joe P. Alessi, 53, had a long military career that began while attending Youngstown State University, where he played football and joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps.

He went to Fort Knox in Kentucky for Army ROTC basic training and and earned his commission with the U.S. Army in 1989. He earned his bachelor’s degree at YSU in 1990. Next he became a graduate assistant in history department at YSU.

In 1995 and 1996, he was deployed on a humanitarian relief mission at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where his unit worked with Haitian and Cuban migrants attempting to flee to the United States. He was among those soldiers who reviewed the history of the migrants to determine if they could enter the United States.

He was on active duty with the Army from from January 1994 to Dec. 31, 2014, serving in infantry during the Cold War and the Global War on Terror (including Operation Iraqi Freedom).

He was deployed to Ryad, Saudia Arabia in 2011, as part of a U.S. military training mission. He was special forces adviser and senior Army adviser. “We operated in 12 different Middle Eastern countries. We did joint training with multinational forces,” he said.

Alessi said a senior military officer once gave him a perspective on how a military career can progress for some people, and he said it applies to him.

“He said when I entered the military, it was a job, a way to pay for college, a way to make money. Then it went from a job to a profession. I understood the purpose of the military to our country and what our role was to be selfless and serve something more important than yourself.

“Then it went from being a profession to a calling, where there are some people who stay the course because they’re a natural fit for it, and they have the ability to make a contribution to their nation and beyond.”

He said after graduating from high school, he didn’t see himself as military material and went to YSU. As time went on, he started to see that he and the military were a good fit, and he went into active duty.

“I went to ranger school and airborne school. I was going to be one of those crazy airborne rangers and jump out of perfectly good aircraft for no apparent reason and hit the ground,” he said.

“Then I wanted to become a captain and command a rifle company,” he said. “The next thing you know, you’re looking back and it’s 19 years. I never went in with the intention of spending 20 years. I never went in to join per se. It just happened.”

After leaving the military, he earned his Ph.D. in history and became senior Army instructor for the Junior Reserve ROTC program at Youngstown East High School. He also teaches in the history department at YSU.

He has a son who is also Joe — Joseph P. Alessi Jr., 23. He is the all-time leading rusher in South Range High School history and later became a running back at YSU. He graduated in May from the College of Dentistry at the Ohio State University.