In the fall of 1953, more than a thousand people turned out for a parade and celebration in South Windham. This was Tony Day, a day set aside to honor Tony Pecoraro, who had been released from a Prisoner of War camp in North Korea, on Aug. 30 that year. He had been held captive for almost three years.

Pecoraro, son of Italian immigrants, was a 1937 graduate of Windham High School, a star baseball pitcher, who graduated from college in 1942. In July, he embarked on a military career that would last 23 years. During World War II, he served three years and returned to Maine to teach math at Casco High School where he was also principal.

In 1946, he was recalled to serve in Korea. He was in the U.S. Army, and as he told me, he and his men were near the Manchurian border and the Yalu River when more than 200,000 Chinese Communists came across the border and captured American soldiers who were interred in POW camps. He said he never gave up home and knew he’d come home. He was released after more than a thousand days.

His family, friends and neighbors in South Windham organized a welcome-home celebration that to this day brings memories to many. Capt. Pecoraro stayed in the Army, and taught military history in the late 1950s. He retired in the spring of 1965, a lieutenant colonel.

He returned to college, got his master’s degree and taught for 13 years in Portland.

On July 4, 1991, Pecoraro was the keynote speaker when Windham dedicated the granite monument “to the men and women of Windham who have served our country”. Pecoraro passed away five years later.