FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

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REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

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FINED: New rules for booster clubs

Continued from Page One The board required the school to enact investigators recommendations that school officials oversee booster clubs for every sport. The Naugatuck Football Alumni Association, now an independent group, will be brought under supervision of the school and will manage its money through the schools central treasury. The high school and Board of Education must develop specific rules governing how booster clubs can spend their money, the CIAC ruled. Three players from Sacred Heart High School who considered transferring to Naugatuck David Coggins, Javon Martin and Xavier Woods are all banned from playing in the first four games of this season. Based on an investigative report submitted earlier this month by the Naugatuckbased law firm Fitzpatrick, Mariano & Santos, three recruiting violations occurred, said CIAC Chairman Robert Hale Jr. Plasky and Johnson broke the rules when they gave $1,000 to Milagros Meme Martin, the mother of Javon Martin and David Coggins, to help pay tuition she owed Sacred Heart and facilitate the transfer. Another violation occurred when they paid more than $300 for all three players to attend a summer football camp at Central Connecticut State University. Finally, Hale concluded the amount of contact between Plasky and Meme Martin, while the family had not yet moved to Naugatuck or enrolled in the school, constituted undue influence,

TODAYS POLL
VOTE ONLINE AT REP-AM.COM

Is a 4-game suspension fair for football players who took money from the Naugatuck booster club to go to a camp?
FIND RESULTS OF YESTERDAYS QUESTION ON PAGE 2A.

JIM SHANNON REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

Lana Grodnik of Waterbury looks at a photo of her uncle, Cpl. Nicholas DeSimone Jr., who went missing while serving in Korea on July 13, 1953.

LETTERS: 7,500 Korean War MIAs

Continued from Page One Grodniks mother was pregnant with her when Nicky went missing. (Grodniks father, Fred DeSimone, is Nickys older brother.) So Mary is going to have a baby, it about time she has a boy, Nicky wrote in a letter dated July 12, 1953, a day before the battle in which many think he died. I think I will be home by the time she has the baby. THE SIMPLICITY OF HIS MISSIVES, with misspellings and poor grammar, touched Grodnik. She grew up hearing about her uncles easygoing nature, but the letters, mostly written to his mother who had a nervous breakdown when her fourth child was declared missing brought him to life. Nicky was a corporal in Company C, 461st Infantry Battalion (Heavy Mortar). His letters mention training in California and a wish to have stayed and made a love picture with Marilyn Monroe and a rough ride on a ship to Japan, followed by a nondescript train ride to Korea. The letters, and a black-bound photo album of snapshots, are all Nickys family have of him. They still hope some piece of him will be found in North Korea, something they can bury beneath his military plaque in a New Britain cemetery. They are not alone. More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War, according to the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, or DPMO. By comparison, there are 73,000 missing from World War II. Grodnik and her sister, Linda Beder of Ohio, do what they can to find information about their uncle. Beder trolls websites run by veterans and sends letters to those who might have known Nicky. She found one man who remembered him, but offered scant details. He was always talked about and always there ... and I think when someone is missing like that, they loom larger than if they had lived, said Beder, who was a toddler when her uncle went missing. I grew up with him as part of my life, even though I never had a relationship with him. The sisters especially want to find answers for the sake of their father, Fred DeSimone, now 85. DeSimone described Nicky as a good brother. Shortly before Nicky was drafted into the service, he built a cottage in East Hampton. Hed buy new furniture for the place and give it to us, and take the old stuff for himself, DeSimone said of Nicky, who stopped school after eighth grade. He was a go-getter. He had a brand-new car and worked in construction. Thinking of the day he drove Nicky to the train station en route to basic training, DeSimone said, I knew Id never see him again. ... I just got that feeling and I had tears in my eyes. But Nicky wasnt scared to go. He was a good-luck guy and thats one of the reasons he got killed. He volunteered for extra duty so he could get extra points. DeSIMONE IS REFERRING TO the few details available about what were likely Nickys final moments in the Battle of Kumsong Salient. Chinese Communist forces launched their largest offensive in the final two years of the war, which had evolved into trench warfare similar to World War I. The North Koreans and Chinese outnumbered the American, South Korean and United Nations forces. Nickys company was providing fire support to South Korean units. He and two others were dispatched to the front lines to find enemy
JIM SHANNON REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

another violation. According to the investigation report, Johnson did not know they had done anything wrong until Web comments on a Republican-American article about the transfers led him to look up the CIAC regulations. When he saw the rules they had violated, he informed Plasky and the two of them reported their actions to Athletic Director Thomas Pompei. Pompei, after hearing the news, drove to Principal Jan Saams house on a Monday night to tell her, according to sworn statements. By the next day, Pompei and Saam had reported the events to the CIAC and Superintendent John Tindall-Gibson ordered an investigation. Plasky was suspended for a day before he resigned. The school and booster club also agreed earlier this month that the group would work through the school rather than independently. BOARD MEMBERS SAID THE PROMPT ACTION of school and district administrators were mitigating factors in the boards ruling. Regulations required the board to fine the school some amount, Hale said. The board had the power to impose up to $10,000 per violation, but chose $2,500 per violation.

The Purple Heart and Bronze Star were posthumously awarded to Cpl. Nicholas DeSimone Jr.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE MISSING

The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, or DPMO, was established in 1993, after the U.S. Senate called for the Department of Defense to form a single office to oversee and manage POW/MIA issues. The organization works to limit the loss or capture of Americans serving abroad, and to bring home those who are captured or killed. Details, provided by the DPMO, from various wars:

The way that this case came to us makes a difference, Hale said. School officials in Naugatuck said they accepted the CIACs ruling. Not that $7,500 isnt a lot of money, but it could have been considerably worse, Saam said. I think they were very fair. I think they needed to send a clear message regarding these types of violations, not just to Naugatuck but to all schools. Tindall-Gibson said he would work with Business Manager Wayne McAllister and the school board to determine where the money to pay the fine would come from. There is no extra money in the school budget, TindallGibson said. The money has to come away from somewhere. It certainly does concern me. I think its unfortunate, but we will certainly comply. David M. Heller, school board chairman, added the school board would pay the fine promptly. Were going to watch closely over our football program to make sure this doesnt happen again, said Heller, whose son played for Plasky before graduating in 2008. Officials said they were grateful this years football team was not banned from playing any games. Students work so hard to be part of a team, to be part of a winning team, Saam said. Were going to get through it and beyond it and put this as a chapter in our history and move on. As long as it didnt hurt kids, Im very happy.

Mark Jaffee contributed to this report.

World War II: Approximately 79,000 Americans were unaccounted

for by the end of the war. This included those buried with honor as unknowns, officially buried at sea, lost at sea, and missing in action. Today, more than 73,000 Americans remain missing.

JOBS: State lost 6,800 positions in August

Continued from Page One The states 9 percent jobless rate is 0.2 percentage points higher than the 8.8 percent rate of August 2011, and 0.9 percentage points higher than the 8.1 percent national unemployment rate. The national rate was 8.3 percent in July. Unlike in July, when the two surveys the state labor department consults each month to help it bring the states employment picture into sharper focus pointed in completely opposite directions, both surveys indicated in August that employment conditions in Connecticut took a sharp turn for the worse. Both monthly labor statistics programs point toward employment losses in Connecticut, said Andy Condon, director of the labor departments Office of Research. In July, one survey which estimates payroll jobs in businesses covered by state unemployment insurance indicated the state had added 5,100 jobs during the month, while the other a survey of individual households indicated the states unemployment rate had climbed during the month to 8.5 percent from 8.1 percent in June. However, while he acknowledged the states employment picture in August was far from encouraging, Condon said his department could not find corroborating evidence that the record losses in employment and increases in unemployment, indicated by the household survey, are occurring at the magnitude the surveys seem to indicate. Other indicators, such as unemployment insurance claims, layoff events and reports of business expansions and contractions, do not support the sudden and steep decline in these indicators, he said. Two of the states six labor market areas gained jobs in

Korean War: More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for. Vietnam War: More than 1,600 Americans remain unaccounted for. Cold War: Many service members risked their lives while collecting
intelligence on the Soviet Bloc, the Peoples Republic of China and North Korea during the period from 1947 to approximately 1991. Today, 126 service members remain missing.

Iraq: Two service members are unaccounted for from Operation Desert Storm; one service member and three Department of Defense contractors from Operation Iraqi Freedom. Afghanistan: One service member is unaccounted for.
Carrie MacMillan

targets and call in the coordinates. On the evening of July 13, Department of Defense documents state, An overwhelming number of Communist Chinese attacked the South Korean positions, including the post where Cpl. DeSimone was stationed. ... The wave couldnt be stopped, and ... with complete disregard for his own safety and rather than surrender, Cpl. DeSimone radioed in his own coordinates and called the artillery and mortar fire down on his own post and all the Chinese troops surrounding it. A letter to Nickys parents from a soldier who was with him offered more details: We were all in the bunker when the Chinese overran our position. The last I know of Nick when he told me he was hit. I dont know because it was dark. An hour later the Chinese came ... Nick was laying there. I dont know for sure if he was dead, but if he wasnt dead, they would have been taken prisoner with me. After I was repatriated, I inquired about Nick and Lt. Cox and all they told me that they were still missing. I honestly believe both Lt. Cox and Nick are dead, but I hope and pray for a miracle. The offensive lasted one week. Communist forces drove the Allied line south six miles, but that gain came with a heavy price with 28,000 Communist soldiers killed. The large loss, historians say, helped spur the acceptance of peace accords one week later. A year after the battle, DPMO sent the DeSimone family a letter that said because none of the 4,400 repatriated American POWs including one of Cpl. DeSimones comrades who had been captured in the same combat where Cpl. DeSimone was lost had ever seen him in enemy hands, a legal presumptive finding of death was filed on 14 July 1954. Nicky was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star with a V, for valor, and a Purple Heart. Despite evidence to the contrary, some members of his family chose to believe he had gotten away somehow, that he met a nice girl and started a family in Korea or China. For years, I think they held out hope that he would walk

through the door, Grodnik said of her family. INSTEAD, NICKY, WEARING HIS military uniform, smiles from a sepia-toned portrait that hangs in the DeSimone living room. I think about how young he was and how he had his whole life ahead of him, Grodnik said. Especially poignant is a letter to Nicky from Grodniks mother. It was dated July 26, 1953, and returned to sender: Dearest Nicky! Just a few lines to let you know we just heard the wonderful news about the Korean Peace treaty. It came over a special news broadcast. I cried like a baby and am so glad for your sake. I hope you get home a lot sooner now. Fred DeSimone doesnt remember how his family learned Nicky was missing if it was via telegram or if someone came to the house. But he knows his mother, who regularly sent her son packages of Italian cookies and dried sausage, went berserk ... Nicky was her baby and they were very close, he said. Nickys letters almost always downplayed hardships and expressed concern for his family. In one, dated June 2, 1953, he talked about winning $800 playing cards. He sent half of the money home and gave the other half to a sergeant traveling to Japan to buy Nickys mother nice china. If you need any money, take all you want and buy dad something for his birthday, Nicky scribbled. The only thing you do for me to make things more pleasant for me is to NOT WORRY ABOUT ME OK MOM AND TELL DAD TO. Nearly six decades later, the special china from Japan is stashed away, but memories and hopes about the son who sent them linger. Intellectually, you know that even if we found a bone fragment, wed be lucky. Emotionally, there is never that closure, Beder said. For my father, I would like to see remains found. No one is at peace because hes not really home. Visit rep-am.com to comment on this story.

August the Danbury market, which gained 1,200, and the Waterbury market, which added 700. Four labor markets lost jobs Norwich-New London and New Haven, which both lost 1,900; Hartford/West Hartford/East Hartford, which lost 1,400; and Bridgeport/Stamford/Norwalk, which shed 400 jobs. Four of Connecticuts 10 employment supersectors showed job increases in August, while six declined, according to the report. The education and health services supersector, which gained 500 jobs during the month, was the states fastestgrowing supersector in August. The information, financial activities and professional and business services supersectors also added jobs during the month. The leisure and hospitality supersector had the highest number of job losses in the state in August with 3,100.