No fewer than 18 members of the 53 graduating class members of Red Bank Catholic High School, Class of 1943, entered military service either because of the draft or volunteering for the last two years of the War. At least two of them became officers before retirement.
The facts were gathered twenty years later when the class held a reunion at the Crystal Brook Inn in Eatontown and reunion committee members gathered information from graduates on how they had spent the two decades since their 1943 graduation.
Also in that same 20 years, 29 members of the class had married and produced 172 children, and 19 achieved college degrees, including two engineers, two doctor ,a nurse and three teachers.
Henry O’Hern served in the Army for two years, from 1944 to 1946, then went on to Fordham and the University of Pennsylvania Dental School. In addition to becoming an orthodontist, Henry also taught the subject at the University of Penn, and was on the staff at Monmouth Medical Center.
Edward McDonough earned his medical degree and practiced medicine in Rochester, NY. His wife, Edith, was also a doctor and the couple had five children.
Raymond Truex, Jr., was one of the two officers in the class, and his military assignments had him log 33,000 miles in Europe, Asia and at home. He spent part of that time in both Laos and Korea before being lucky enough to get transferred to Fort Monmouth. At the time of the reunion, the Truex’s had six children, with a 7th on the way.
William Travis was a Major in the Army at the time of the reunion, and a graduate of West Point, but far better known for his heroism and distinguished service during the Korean War. He and his wife, the former Anne Jarrett were in Athens on military duty at the time of the reunion and unable to join the crowd.
While no females from the Class of 1943 served in the military, several married military men or worked on military installations, Patricia Kellenyi’s husband Leonard Chernausky retired from the Air Force and the couple purchased a home in Fair Haven where they raised their five children.
Patrcia worked at Naval Weapons Station Earle, then known as NAD Earle. As NAD Earle. (Naval Ammunition Depot Earle)
