Huntington honors Nazi POW, veterans' advocate with street dedication

Staff Sgt. Michael J. Colamonico spent 17 months as a Nazi prisoner of war in World War II after his plane was shot down over France. But for most of his life, the Air Force veteran rarely talked about the war.

“He told us he just came home, picked up his life and carried on,” daughter Laura Fanzilli, 66, of Norwalk, Connecticut, recalled.

On Saturday, Colamonico’s sacrifice and service were immortalized in a sign dedicating McKay Road, the street outside the Huntington Station home where he lived for six decades, as “SSGT USAF Michael J. Colamonico Way.”

“I’m very proud they recognized all my husband did, and of course it’s a great honor,” his widow, Lorraine Colamonico, 90, said as her black-gloved hand clutched the pole of the street sign after a dedication ceremony. “What could be more wonderful?”

Colamonico died on Dec. 27, 2013, three weeks shy of his 93rd birthday.

The son of Italian immigrants who grew up in Brooklyn, Colamonico was 22 and a top turret gunner when, after a bombing run near Bordeaux, a Nazi fighter plane shot down the B-17 bomber he was in. It had been his first bombing mission. He and seven others were taken prisoner. Two soldiers escaped and one was killed.

Colamonico spent most of his captivity in Stalag 17, the Austrian POW camp made famous by the 1953 film of the same name.

“You don’t realize all of what he went through,” said son Michael Colamonico Jr., 62, who now lives in France, coincidentally only 40 miles from the field where his father’s plane crashed. “When I was growing up he was just a normal dad. Who knows what he was dreaming at night or what he was thinking?”

Yet, family members and others said Saturday, Colamonico was “the life of the party,” a man who always had a smile and loved to dance.

“You would have never known he went through such a trauma and such a sacrifice in his life and that he was a prisoner of war,” said Huntington Town Councilman Mark Cuthbertson, adding he attended many veterans’ events with Colamonico.

One of the family's treasured keepsakes — which was brought out Saturday for visitors to peruse — is a notebook full of pictures that Colamonico drew while in Stalag 17 depicting the Statue of Liberty, fighter jets and other patriotic illustrations. He drew them with color pencils that he had bartered with German soldiers, he said in a 2007 Newsday interview.

"In order to keep a healthy mind, I was active," he said. "I did whatever I could.”

After retiring from his job as a textiles salesman, Colamonico opened up more about his wartime experiences, family members said. He spent much of his time in retirement helping other veterans, including at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He was a charter member of the Huntington Town Veterans Advisory Board.

“He worked very hard — not for himself,” said Lorraine Colamonico, his wife of 64 years. “He cared greatly for the veterans.”