Positivity: Edward Cloonan, 90 passes away; was Waltham (MA) fire chief, WWII hero
Posted May 23, 2009 07:02 AM
In January 1945, Edward A. Cloonan Jr. was a staff sergeant with the 70th Infantry Division in Europe during World War II when he and other US soldiers were ambushed. As bullets flew, one struck him in the chest, tearing into a Catholic daily missal.
“It was a prayer book that his mother had sent to him,” said Mr. Cloonan’s son Richard, of Manassas, Va. “Basically it saved his life. He had it in his upper left chest pocket, right over his heart, and he would have been mortally wounded.”
Spared on the battlefield, Mr. Cloonan went home to the job he had started just before joining the Army and rose to become chief of the Waltham Fire Department, a position he held for 20 years. Mr. Cloonan, who lived in the city of his birth his entire life, died Tuesday in his Waltham home. He was 90.
“It’s an incredible story,” said Mr. Cloonan’s son Ned of Greenwich, Conn., calling the prayer book a kind of spiritual body armor.
“I’ve seen this missal,” he said. “There’s a hole and burn marks all around, but it acted as the very first Kevlar. I mean, it was God’s Kevlar.”
Mr. Cloonan graduated in 1936 from St. Mary’s High School.”His father was a policeman for the city of Waltham,” Richard said. “I think that’s where he got his sense of service to the community.”
Joining the fire department in 1941, Mr. Cloonan was a call firefighter before leaving to fight in World War II. He served in the 275th Infantry Regiment of the 70th Infantry Division, which was known as the Trailblazers, and fought in France, Germany, and the Battle of the Bulge.
For helping to lead troops under heavy fire on three separate days in Philippsbourg, France, and Saarbrucken, Germany, Mr. Cloonan was awarded a Bronze Star for his heroism. Despite the honor, he was reticent about discussing his wartime service.
“This is a guy who never spoke about the war until five or six years ago,” Ned said. “He always participated in the various alumni services, but never talked about what he saw. He basically went to honor all those people who didn’t come back.”
Mr. Cloonan had specific plans for his return to Waltham.
“When he was in the war, he said to guys in the service, ‘This is what I want. I’m going to go home, I’m going to join the fire department, and I’m going to marry an Irish girl,’ ” his son said.
The Irish girl turned out to be Patricia Sullivan of Wellesley, whom he met through a relative. They married 61 years ago.
But before marrying, he was already back with the Waltham Fire Department, where he was promoted to lieutenant in 1948, to captain in 1951, and to deputy fire chief in 1954. Ten years later, Mr. Cloonan was named chief of the department, a position he held until 1984.
“He came up through the ranks very quickly,” said Waltham Fire Chief Richard Cardillo, who joined the department while Mr. Cloonan was the boss and became chief in 2005. “He was chief for 20 years. I can’t even imagine that.” ….
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