By Michael P. Walsh
Special to the Voice
On this year’s observance of Memorial Day, the city salutes Louis W. “Lou” Giordano Sr., a World War II Navy veteran who passed away on May 11, 2022, at age 95.
Giordano was a lifelong Westie and a man of faith, family and service.
During his wartime service, he was stationed aboard the destroyer escort USS Bright out of the Hawaiian Islands and the Marshall Islands. The warship served in the Allied island-hopping campaign against Imperial Japanese forces in the war’s Pacific theater.
The USS Bright participated in a series of hunter-killer operations out of the Hawaiian and Marshall islands from Nov. 24, 1944, to April 23, 1945. The destroyer escort was part of a group of anti-submarine warships that were deployed to attack Japanese submarines by dropping depth charges.
On May 11-13, 1944, the USS Bright, heading toward the Japanese island of Okinawa, was attacked by a squadron of Zero fighter planes and kamikaze suicide planes, causing the warship to take on water.
Under machine-gun fire, Giordano, a gunner, remained at his station and returned fire until the battle ended.
The USS Bright was towed to the Kerama Islands, southwest of Okinawa, for emergency repairs before arriving at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu on June 14, 1945.
Giordano was honorably discharged from the Navy in May 1946.
Back at home, he started working as an apprentice stonecutter with his father, Walter Giordano Sr., who co-founded Giordano Bros. Monuments in West Haven in 1921.
Nearly a century later, Giordano Bros. was commissioned by the city to craft a granite stone in memory of West Haven Veterans Council President Lorelee “Lori” Grenfell, who died in February 2015 at age 60. The stone was dedicated in May 2015 as part of the Phase 8 dedication of the brick Veterans Walk of Honor in Bradley Point Park.
Giordano later worked at the Armstrong Rubber Co. in West Haven. The tire manufacturing plant shuttered on April 1, 1981, after operating near Sawmill Road for 70 years.
He also worked at the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. in New Haven and the United Nuclear Corp., also in the Elm City.
According to nephew-in-law Ronald Pisani Jr., who is the West Haven Fire Department’s deputy chief of operations, Giordano’s favorite pastime was watching the city’s Memorial Day parade and cheering on his fellow veterans at Campbell Avenue and Leete Street year after year.
Above all, Giordano was a man of compassion and selflessness who paid it forward by giving hope and help to countless individuals and family members through the decades.
Along with his loving wife of 67 years, Rita Palmieri Giordano, he is survived by son Louis Giordano Jr., daughter Joy Giordano Clark, and many siblings, nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by son John Giordano and daughter Laurie Giordano.
Giordano’s family said that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren were “the light of his life,” and that his love for God and his family was “immeasurable.”
“He taught us how to love better, give more and complain less.”
On Memorial Day and every day, please remember Lou Giordano and all other veterans, both living and deceased, in your thoughts and prayers.
America owes a profound debt of gratitude for the unwavering courage and selfless sacrifice of its service members and their invaluable contributions to preserving and protecting the United States.