Battleship vet still building dollhouses

Joe Kernan
Posted 11/12/14

We recently got a call from Fred Velletri of Johnston telling us he built a dollhouse to keep his World War II memorabilia in. That sounded like a rather unique way to store relics of the biggest …

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Battleship vet still building dollhouses

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We recently got a call from Fred Velletri of Johnston telling us he built a dollhouse to keep his World War II memorabilia in. That sounded like a rather unique way to store relics of the biggest conflict in human history, so we went out to see it.

“No, I have a dollhouse in the room that I keep my memorabilia in,” said Velletri, by way of explanation. “Anyway, here it is.”

There was a dollhouse in the room, but it was surrounded by small tables and shelves that held the large and small mementos of 92 years of life. The dollhouse was just a ruse to get us out there to see what Fred had accumulated.

The largest part of his collection was made of objects reflecting the time he spent on the USS North Carolina. As of 1941, it was the first new battleship built in 20 years. Velletri joined the Navy in February of 1941 and six months later, after boot camp in Newport, Rhode Island, he got his orders to report for duty on the ship.

“I couldn’t get over the size of it,” he wrote much later. “All I thought was, I would never find my way around.”

Then Pearl Harbor happened.

“When we left Brooklyn Navy Yard for the last time, we sailed under the Brooklyn Bridge, where people were waving to us, wishing us good luck, telling us to give the Japs hell and to make sure we came back.”

The North Carolina made its way down the east coast, to the Panama Canal and then on to Pearl Harbor in July.

“When we arrived, there were people applauding us as we came in,” said Velletri. “After the bombing, we were the first battleship to arrive in the harbor. We were the first good thing to arrive there after the attack.”

After that, there was more training as part of a task force heading for the Japanese held islands in the Pacific to take the islands back. They were at Guadalcanal in August, supporting the Marine landing and getting their first taste of battle.

“Seven Japanese planes were shot down and some damage was done to our ship,” wrote Velletri. “After the smoke cleared we could have shot down more planes.”

But the cockiness subsided after more Japanese attacks and a torpedo hit the North Carolina.

“Into the air I went four feet high and, thanking God, I landed on deck…We left the task force under full speed with a hole in our side, headed for Pearl Harbor.”

On the way, Velletri helped the corpsmen identify and clean up the bodies of the sailors who died in the attack. It was the kind of duty that any young man would remember forever. And it was only the beginning.

“There were 15 major battles in the Pacific,” said Velettri. “I was in 14 of them.”

He went through the Marianas, Saipan, Tinian and Guam.

“During some of the action, we buried our dead on the islands and some of them we put into the sea, a sad sight no matter where it was.”

According to naval records of the North Carolina, she was considered the world’s greatest sea weapon at the time of her commissioning. Armed with nine 16-inch guns in three turrets and twenty 5-inch guns in 10 twin mounts, her wartime complement consisted of 144 commissioned officers and 2,195 enlisted men, including about 100 Marines. It participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific area of operations and earned 15 battle stars.

“In the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August of 1942, the battleship’s anti-aircraft barrage helped save the carrier Enterprise, thereby establishing the primary role of the fast battleship as protector of aircraft carriers. One of her Kingfisher pilots performed heroically during the strike on Truk when he rescued 10 downed Navy aviators on April 30, 1944. In all, the North Carolina carried out nine shore bombardments, sank an enemy troopship, destroyed at least 24 enemy aircraft and assisted in shooting down many more. Her anti-aircraft guns helped halt or frustrate scores of attacks on aircraft carriers.” The Japanese announced that the North Carolina had been sunk six times, which was wishful thinking on their part. By war’s end, the ship lost only 10 men in action and had 67 wounded.

It was decommissioned in June 1947, but by that time Velletri had been transferred to the USS Burleson, a troop transport and supply ship in 1944. He was back in the war zone in time for the invasion of Okinawa. She was later assigned to taking troops home with the “Magic Carpet” fleet returning Pacific veterans to the west coast.

During the early part of 1946 the Burleson underwent conversion to an animal transport. She transported thousands of animals to Bikini and distributed them to assigned areas. It was the first of many atomic bomb tests to be conducted at Bikini. Upon completion of the tests the animals were gathered up and returned to the Burleson.

“I saw the first bomb being dropped from a plane and we were only 15 miles away,” according to Velletri. “All we did was bend our heads and cover our eyes with our arms. We could see those tests and were close enough to be exposed,” said Velletri, “We were guinea pigs, but they never acknowledged that.”

Another Burleson adventure was when a man fell overboard in Hong Kong and Velletri dived overboard to save him.

“It was a good thing that people remembered to call “Man Overboard,” because the two of us could have been sucked into the propellers if they didn’t stop the engines.”

The Burleson was placed out of commission in November of 1946.

But it is his life on the North Carolina that made the larger impact on Velletri, long after he returned to civilian life.

“Coming back from Florida [in 1962] we saw a billboard with a picture of the North Carolina on it, asking to come visit the war memorial for the state,” said Velletri. “I was so glad to find out that she was saved.”

Velletri learned of the grassroots campaign to save the ship, with children saving their pennies to support the memorial.

“I joined the USS North Carolina Association and am a lifetime member,” wrote Velletri in 1995. “We have reunions every year. It is nice to walk on board and see someone coming across the deck calling your name, remembering you after not seeing you for 30 years.”

Velletri is a past president of the North Carolina and said that this year was the last formal reunion for the ship’s crew. Not many are left now, and those that are aren’t really up to travel.

But Velletri had a lot more in his life beside his war experiences. He has been though two marriages, has seven children, 29 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. When he wasn’t making meatballs for Little Leaguers, Velletri used the carpentry skills he brought home to Rhode Island’s Department of Administration as an all-around maintenance man to build a series of dollhouses for the really little women in his life, about 15 so far.

The latest one was on display last Saturday, when 2-year-old Sienna Hopkins came by Velletri’s house to see her new dollhouse. She’s not one of his grandchildren but he’s known Sienna’s mother most of her life and thought her family could use a nice dollhouse.

“My son-in-law helped me bring it up from the basement,” said Velletri with a smile. “He reminded me that I still have a couple of granddaughters who don’t have dollhouses…yet.”

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