Remains of area WWII veteran recovered and returned home

Remains of area WWII veteran recovered and returned home

Staff Sgt. Eugene J. Darrigan

Photo Provided

WAPPINGERS FALLS — True to a promise to bring every hero home, the nation’s Defense Department’s Prisoner of war/Missing in action Accounting Agency announced on Tuesday, Jan. 21, that the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Eugene J. Darrigan of Wappingers Falls, New York, would be returning home. Lost in a plane shot down over water in 1944, the bomber’s wreckage was discovered in 2023 bearing the remains that were identified in 2024, 80 years after the WWII hero was killed in action.

Defense Department scientists used dental records, DNA analysis and other evidence bits including identification tags to identify the bomber crew’s remains that were unearthed from the crash site during a month of underwater excavation and recovery between March and April 2023.

In March of 1944, Darrigan had been assigned to the 320th Bombardment Squadron and deployed to New Guinea in the Pacific, serving as a radio operator aboard a bomber. On March 11, his crew undertook a bombing mission along the northern coast of New Guinea and were fired upon by the enemy’s anti-aircraft weapons, causing an on-board bomb to burst into flame and the plane to fall into the sea.

The search for the crash site continued for four years until 1948 and in 1950 the military unit conducting the search declared that Darrigan and his fellow crew members were non-recoverable and, therefore, lost.

In a four-year period beginning in 2013, however, the family of 2nd Lt. Kelly — the bombardier on the lost plane — undertook to reopen the search, working with a researcher from the University of Illinois—Champaign-Urbana. Experts at “Project Recover,” partnered with the Defense Department’s Accounting Agency, located the plane’s wreckage using modern sonar technology.

Darrigan’s name is listed on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, along with other WWII heroes whose names remain among the missing. To signify that Darrigan’s remains have been located, a symbol will be added next to his name.

Staff Sgt. Darrigan will be buried in Calverton, New York. The burial date has not yet been determined.

Latest News

Juneteenth and Mumbet’s legacy

Sheffield resident, singer Wanda Houston will play Mumbet in "1781" on June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main, Falls Village.

Jeffery Serratt

In August of 1781, after spending thirty years as an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, was the first enslaved person to sue for her freedom in court. At the time of her trial there were 5,000 enslaved people in the state. MumBet’s legal victory set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1790, the first in the nation. She took the name Elizabeth Freeman.

Local playwrights Lonnie Carter and Linda Rossi will tell her story in a staged reading of “1781” to celebrate Juneteenth, ay 7 p.m. at The Center on Main in Falls Village, Connecticut.Singer Wanda Houston will play MumBet, joined by actors Chantell McCulloch, Tarik Shah, Kim Canning, Sherie Berk, Howard Platt, Gloria Parker and Ruby Cameron Miller. Musical composer Donald Sosin added, “MumBet is an American hero whose story deserves to be known much more widely.”

Keep ReadingShow less
A sweet collaboration with students in Torrington

The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.

Photo by Kristy Barto, owner of The Nutmeg Fudge Company

Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.

The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.

Keep ReadingShow less
In the company of artists

Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute

Aida Laleian

For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.

Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”

Keep ReadingShow less