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Berge Avadanian: hero kept fellow soldiers in his heart

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  • Berge Avadanian: hero kept fellow soldiers in his heart

    The Boston Globe
    June 9, 2005, Thursday THIRD EDITION

    BERGE AVADANIAN; HERO KEPT FELLOW SOLDIERS IN HIS HEART

    By Tom Long, Globe Staff


    Berge Avadanian was a World War II hero who threw out the opening
    ball for the Red Sox fifth-game victory over the Yankees in last
    year's American League Championship Series. He was 86.

    Mr. Avadanian, who was born on Flag Day 1918, the year of the Red Sox
    World Series victory, died in his Watertown home on June 6, the 61st
    anniversary of the day he parachuted into France during the D-day
    invasion of France.

    "I wonder if he was just waiting for the anniversary of D-day. It
    was a wonderful thing in some ways," Mr. Avadanian's daughter, Sandra
    A. Starck of Watertown, said yesterday.

    Although he worked for the Coast Guard and later dealt in antiques,
    Mr. Avadanian never forgot his fellow soldiers. Each year in the days
    before Memorial Day he would visit cemeteries in Belmont, Newton,
    Watertown, and Waltham and place a flag and a personal letter on the
    graves of about 150 veterans.

    "Dear old friend Tom," read one of the notes, according to
    American Veteran magazine. "I will always remember you. Your
    great-grandchildren visited me last week. They are beautiful."

    A native of Lynn, who grew up on a farm in Bellingham, Mr.
    Avadanian joined the Army shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl
    Harbor. As a sergeant in the 82d Airborne Division, he participated
    in seven major campaigns, including the invasion of Italy, the Battle
    of the Bulge, and the D-day invasion of France.

    Mr. Avadanian remembered D-day in a story published in the spring
    2003 issue of American Veteran: "Enemy antiaircraft fire was
    intense," he said of his jump into France with 150 pounds of
    equipment strapped to his body. "And I could see cows but at first,
    no people and no Germans. That changed in a hurry. I can recall a
    fine young lieutenant who had gotten a haircut from our company
    barber a couple of days prior to D-day, just as I had done. The next
    time I saw him he was still in his parachute hanging from a tree near
    the churchyard at St. Mere Eglise with his throat cut. The Germans
    who had bivouacked in and around the town were merciless."

    During the 34 days of intense combat that followed, the 82d Airborne
    suffered heavy casualties. "Wherever we fought, those once-quiet
    little Norman towns became intense rubble within days, sometime
    hours," Mr. Avadanian recalled. "The airborne division spearheaded
    inland of those beaches with almost 13,000 men and returned to
    England with only 5,800 all the rest were missing, wounded, or dead."

    Mr. Avadanian was wounded twice. He was awarded a number of
    decorations, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Croix de
    Guerre.

    After the war he was a procurement officer for the Veterans
    Administration in Boston for several years and principal contracting
    officer of the US Coast Guard's North Atlantic Region for decades.

    Mr. Avadanian held a number of posts in AMVETS and was the national
    commander of the service organization in 1973 and 1974.

    He never regretted his military service and said he would be happy to
    do it all over again.

    "If God would allow me to be born again, I would pray to God to put
    me on that same road to Normandy," Mr. Avadanian said in a story
    published in the Boston Herald in 2004. "It was the most gratifying
    thing I have ever done. I was so proud to be fighting for my
    country."

    Mr. Avadanian was also a lifelong Red Sox fan.

    "I listened to them on one of those homemade radios on the farm
    when I was a little boy," he said in a story published in The New
    York Times in 2004. "I was in Paris listening to them on a shortwave
    radio when they played the World Series in 1946. And when I jumped
    out of a plane in Normandy, one of the last things I said before I
    went out the door was, 'I wonder what the Red Sox are doing,' and a
    wise guy from New York said, 'They probably lost as usual.' "

    When Mr. Avadanian threw out the first ball for the fifth game of the
    championship series last October at Fenway Park, it was like a dream
    come true. "He had a wonderful time," said his daughter. "They picked
    him up in a limousine."

    In addition to his daughter, Mr. Avadanian leaves his wife, Rose
    Marie (Bazarian); a son, Paul B. of Waltham; a sister, Mary
    Kachichian of Stoneham; and two grandchildren.

    A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow in St. James
    Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown. Burial will be in Mount
    Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
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