Jun 2, 2013 4 min read

Victor Mazza had barely removed his cap and gown and he was embroiled in World War II.

Fresh out of Chartiers Township High School in 1943, he signed on with the Army Air Forces and was soon a gunner on a Boeing B-29. His first mission, over Japan, was a rousing success.

“Afterward, I went to turn in my uniform to have it cleaned,” Mazza recalled, nearly seven decades later. “I was told that I can’t, that it would be bad luck.”

So he flew again – successfully. And again. And again … always above Japan, always triumphantly.

“I wore it for 35 missions and never washed the uniform,” said Mazza, for whom the catchphrase “War Is Hell” should have been “War Is Smell.”

“It could stand by itself. It had a life of its own,” he said, chuckling.

Laughter, amazing anecdotes, fond recollections and food were served generously Saturday at the Amwell Township home of Dolores Pell Meredith. It was the 70th reunion of the Class of 1943 at Chartiers Township High, the forerunner to Chartiers-Houston, and from late morning to early evening, the 15 partiers in their mid- to late 80s were teens again.

“Someone (from the class) said they couldn’t be there,” said Meredith, the reunion organizer. “I said, ‘Why come up with a lame excuse? How often does something like (a 70th reunion) happen?'”

The 10 classmates who attended – one got lost en route – are hearty and hardy, a reflection of their class, the second to graduate from Chartiers Township High. Of 97 who earned diplomas, at least 28 are alive and heading toward 90 – an impressive 29 percent, especially considering this was wartime. (The whereabouts of three are unknown.)

This class had its first reunion in 1953 then started having get-togethers every five years. “We have mini-reunions in between,” said Meredith, who has attended every event along with Lilyan Bedillion Blough and Glenn Bennington.

“Some of us didn’t get to get to graduate,” said Bill Cimino, of North Strabane Township. “This is our graduation.”

Blough freely admits she “sneaked” through graduation, and it had nothing to do with academics.

“I was a war bride,” she said. “I was married before I graduated, and you couldn’t go to school if you were married. I thought marriage is fine, but I wanted to go to high school so I sneaked (and didn’t tell anyone). When we got our diplomas, I showed my rings.

“The principal came up to us and said, ‘I hear there’s a bride in here and I want to give her a kiss.’ I said, ‘No, I’ve been married only six months.'”

Blough recalled commencement was on a Wednesday and she was boarded train that Friday to reunite with her husband in Florida.

Bennington likewise served in the Navy for 32 months during World War II, then 14 months in the Korean conflict, all without being wounded. He said he was to report for duty the night he was to graduate, but got a one-month military delay.

Despite the ferocity of war, no one from her class died fighting, Meredith said. One member of the Class of ’42 was killed.

Mazza, a Washington resident, enjoyed talking about his increasingly rancid military uniform, but his WWII memories aren’t all cheerful.

“I saw the devastation the atom bomb did to Hiroshima,” he said. “I flew over the day after.”

Also, his brother Pat was a prisoner of war in a German stalag. But he survived and is now 95 and living in Florida.

Most of the classmates on hand Saturday live reasonably close. Jim Mullins, from Grafton in north-central Ohio, had the longest commute.

The other ’43 grads in attendance were Veronica Barbish Progar, Nancy Hyson Sasek, Harold Mondik and Edna Tilger Moss.

“There’s a bond. We know each other so much better than we did in school,” Meredith said. “Our class sticks together.”