Told by Tom, Thomas Joseph HalloranA recorded story
Dad’s Navy years
Emily asked me about Dad’s time in the Navy, the letters, and how he and Mom finally got together. Recorded at the kitchen table, Thanksgiving 2025.
- 1 minute 24 seconds
- Recorded 28 November 2025
- Between 1942 and 1947
Photographs
Of the people in this story
Transcript
Tap any word to hear it from there. The words follow along as the recording plays.
Can you tell me about Grandpa Joe in the war?
My father, Joe Halloran, joined the Navy in 1942, right after his 22nd birthday. He was a machinist's mate on a destroyer, the USS Hammond, out in the Pacific. He almost never talked about the fighting. What he talked about was the engine room, and the heat.
And the letters?
The letters were the whole thing. Before he shipped out he had met a girl from Fall River, Eleanor Costa. Everybody called her Ellie. Her mother, my Vovó, Maria Costa, did not approve of a boy who wasn't Portuguese. So Ellie wrote to him in secret, and her cousin mailed the letters. He kept every one of them in a cigar box. I still have it.
When did he come home?
He came home in November of 1945. He took the train from Boston straight down to Fall River, still in his uniform, and knocked on the Costas' door. Vovó opened it, looked at him for a long time, and then she went and made him a plate of food. That was her way of saying yes. They were married in the spring of 1947, at Saint Anne's in Fall River. Aunt Peggy was the maid of honor, and the best man was Walter Brennan, who married Peggy a few years later.
Transcribed automatically from the recording, so a name or place may be spelled wrong here and there.