THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, May 24, 2019 Page 11 O’TOOLE | from page 10 Council participates? A: Yes. Q: So this year [Friday, May 24], you will go dressed up in your Air Force uniform and not the Marine uniform? A: Yes, because that’s the branch I retired from even though I started as a United States Marine. I always consider myself … once a Marine, always a Marine. But with the Air Force, I spent 21 years in the Air National Guard. They gave me my retirement, so I honor them by wearing my command chief Air Force uniform. Q: So you are a retired deputy superintendent with the Boston Police Department who served with that department for 37 years. And being a native of Charlestown, how is it that you wound up here in Saugus? A: Well, I liked the town after I moved here. As a police offi - cer, I liked the fact that I could do my job in Boston and leave what I did back there. When I was home, I was home. Q: And you told me you like history and had a neat experience growing up in Charlestown. A: I lived one street over from the Bunker Hill Monument. Our house was on Ferrin Street. My brothers and I dug up a cannonball one day. We brought it up to the Bunker Hill Monument and the Park Rangers took it. They said it was from that era [the American Revolutionary War]. Q: Now, do you have anybody close to you, or friends or acquaintances, that you refl ect on over Memorial Day? A: Quite a few. I always think of my older brother Tom. He was a Marine. He went into it right out of Cathedral High School [Boston, Mass.]. He went in as a private. He actually started out in the band playing the bugle, and he ended up in Force Recon [Reconnaissance] – you talk about two different styles! But he was highly decorated. He spent 28 years in the Marine Corps. He was wounded and spent three and a half years in Vietnam. Q: So he was a Purple Heart. A: Oh, Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and Presidential Unit Citation – he was a highly decorated Marine. He came home and started teaching college, and he sadly ended up passing away of throat cancer. And I refl ect on that because (I can’t say Agent Orange) he was a smoker. But I didn’t think it helped him being over there in Vietnam. Q: When did he pass away? A: Tom passed away in 2004, and he was always, like, my hero. Q: Was it around this time that he passed away? A: No, he passed away in February. But any time I think of the military, memories of Tom leak out to me right away. Starting as a bugle player and ended up Force Recon. He had quite a career … At the last meeting of the Saugus Veterans Council, there was a young woman and she was leaving for boot camp on the 23rd [Thursday of this week]; she’s going to miss our parade. But she was going into the Navy, so you look at young people like that, and you go “Wow!” To see people that will still step up to serve – that gives me hope, because you hear so many negative things. When you see things like that, it gives me hope that there’s a lot of good people out there. Q: Now, you’ve lived in town 50 years. Right? A: Yeah, approximately 50 years. Q: So over those 50 years, you have observed the ceremonies in town? A: Honestly, about the fi rst 20 or so, I kind of kept to myself, like a lot of people. But then I ran into people I knew from the American Legion. Then I would attend the American Legion meetings, and the next thing I know, I was commander of the post, so I started getting involved in it. And when we started up the Saugus Veterans Council, I saw an opportunity to get the message out that A) Veterans are out there and – I know that my brother Tommy would get upset about this, the public misconceptions – that veterans are everyday, good people. Not all veterans are alcoholics; not all veterans are drug addicts; not all veterans are homeless. The great majority of veterans who served came home and blended into the community and became reporters, policemen, fi remen, construction workers and just went about their lives. Those who need help, they’re out there and we should help them. But sometimes we stereotype – and I know, as a policeman, we need to be very careful of not stereotyping – I hate to use the word “profi le.” But sometimes the media and people depict veterans in a way you can almost be afraid of them, and really, it’s not so. Q: When you’re there Friday at the Waybright School, will you talk about the veteran – Cpl. Scott J. Procopio? [The Saugus native and Marine who was killed in April 2006 by a roadside bomb in Ramadi, Iraq. To honor him, the Saugus American Legion was rededicated in 2007, “The Cpl. Scott J. Procopio Saugus Post 210.”] A: Oh yeah. We’ll mention O’TOOLE | SEE PAGE 14 J& S LANDSCAPE & MASONRY CO. 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