Staff photo / Brandon Cantwell Joseph Perone, 99, served in the Navy for nearly four years. He is a Girard native but now lives at Shepherd of the Valley in Liberty. He will be 100 on June 18.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a weekly series published each Monday between Memorial Day and Veterans Day honoring local veterans.

LIBERTY — While his 100th birthday is closing in, time hasn’t taken away Joseph Perone’s memories of his time in the Navy — nearly 80 years ago for him now.

“I remember every day of it; I enjoyed it, I liked the Navy. I enjoyed being with all the guys on the ship — I never had any regrets,” Perone said. “A lot of people got drafted, and a lot of them joined and then they complained all the time that they wished they were home. When the war was over, I could have stayed in the Navy, (but) my father died from World War I. I had to go home and earn some money for the family.”

Perone, who was 17 when he enlisted, was in his sophomore year of high school when he dropped out to help in World War II. It was Nov. 30, 1942, and the war was in full swing.

His enlistment took him from his Girard neighborhood to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he attended boot camp. Perone said he lost the company he initially joined because he caught pneumonia.

“When we graduated from boot camp, we went to Norfolk (Virginia); I went to Chicago. At the train station, I looked over, there wasn’t a sailor there — all soldiers,” Perone said. “My orders were to get on the 54 train to Norfolk. I saw all these soldiers getting on the train so I told the sergeant, ‘I think I’m lost — I was told to get on this train but I don’t see no sailors.’ He said, ‘You’re not lost; you’re going on this train.'”

Perone said he initially volunteered to be on a submarine and thought he’d be on one because he took the aptitude test for it and passed. However, because of a big invasion in North Africa, t he ended up going on a ship, the USS Niblack.

“Me by myself, going on the ship, I went to go up the ladder and one sailor looked at me and he said, ‘Jesus Christ, we’re losing the war; we’ve got babies coming aboard ship,” Perone said. “I was only 17 years old, but I looked younger than that.”

Perone served as a third class gunner’s mate, and he took his job very seriously as he and his fellow soldiers toured Europe. He was in three invasions and helped rescue many capsized sailors and allies.

“We saved 220 British sailors. Two ships sank; our ships saved them,” he said.

He was also there to assist other vessels.

“The USS Philadelphia was disabled and the Germans were ready to sink it. We shot down two German planes hooked up to the Philadelphia. We saved the ship,” Perone said.

He served on the USS Ault, and by the time he was 18, he was a gun captain. His job was to direct the men in his unit to fire a 40 mm quad gun.

While in the Pacific, Perone and his fellow soldiers helped rescue 47 pilots who were shot down and saved 90 sailors who were on Bunker Hill.

But he also went 80 days without seeing land, twice.

Perone said he was on the first ship going to Italy, the first ship going to China and the first ship going to Tokyo. He saw Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Philippines, North Africa, Sicily, Salerno and Anzio. But when he was discharged on June 18, 1946, in Seattle at the age of 21, he realized he had never seen the United States outside his own home.

Perone was originally with a fellow soldier from Pittsburgh, with whom he was hitchhiking, but they parted ways because of the truck’s conditions. Perone deemed the vehicle as too bumpy — noting that he’d hit his head on the ceiling and they had to wear a big belt so their guts wouldn’t come out.

Perone’s journey took him across the western United States, where he saw such places as Las Vegas and Yellowstone National Park.

He came back on a Thursday. He went straight to US Steel and applied for a job.

“They asked me what I could do, and I told them I could shoot a gun. I had no experience,” he said.

Despite that, they told him to come back Monday and he could start training as a welder. Soon after, he started taking extra jobs painting on the side. Before too long, he decided to start his own painting business, Dual Painting Co.

During the course of 60 years, he employed more than 100 people in his business.

Outside of his painting business, however, Perone was also an avid golfer. He started the game at 43 and managed three hole-in-ones throughout his playing career. He shot his last one when he was 94, using a 4-wood to ace the 123-yard No. 15 at Mahoning Country Club.

Perone fondly recalled his first ace in Hubbard, calling the shot as part of a teaching moment to his nephew, who was 15 at the time.

“He was playing badly. He hit the ball well, but never paid attention to improve. I said, ‘this is an easy hole, you can par this hole’, because he had no pars,” Perone said. “He said, ‘Uncle Joe, how do you get a hole-in-one?’ I told him you look at that ball, look at the pin, get over the ball again, look at the pin and swing right for it. And it went right in the hole.”