Newtown resident Mary Jo Pecora-Runkle was only 4 years old when her beloved uncle, Joseph Anthony Pecora, Jr, died at the age of 20 in Vietnam while serving in the United States Army.

After more than half a century of unanswered questions surrounding his death, her family was able to experience the life-changing gift of closure when a long-lost friend of her uncle’s reached out to make good on a pact he made with his friend many years ago.

Fun-Loving Uncle

Pecora-Runkle remembers her Uncle Joey fondly, recalling him as the type of man who would not say a bad thing about anyone.

“He was fun to be around and he was always smiling and goofing around,” she reminisced.

She was told that his youthful nature fooling around trying to hit family members with ping pong balls translated to an expertise in the military as a grenade launcher.

“He was such a good shot, because he could ricochet it off a tree,” Pecora-Runkle said.

Joseph’s untimely passing left a deep impression on her, and she still vividly remembers witnessing her Italian relatives grieving at her grandmother’s house after his death.

To honor Joseph’s heroic legacy, her family began attending the annual Byram Veterans Association’s Memorial Day service for fallen soldiers from Byram, in Greenwich. The service allows families to participate by gathering at a planted tree that pays tribute to their departed loved one.

“As the years went on, my grandfather would buy coffee and donuts for the families, and after he passed away my dad took on the tradition,” Pecora-Runkle said.

Her father, Sylvester J. Pecora, Sr, of Greenwich, always wondered what happened to his brother the day he died in Vietnam.

Joseph was a Private First Class (PFC) in the army, and according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, he “fell in the service of his country while a member of 1st Battalion, 27th Infantwry (Wolfhounds), 25th Infantry Division.”

Pecora-Runkle says the army did not disclose any details about Joseph’s death other than the date, May 3, 1966, which was just ten days shy of his 21th birthday.

So when her family received a call out of the blue from Florida resident Douglas M. Udell earlier this year, it was a shock to hear he knew exactly what happened the day her uncle died — because he was there with him.

Pecora-Runkle explained, “Douglas left messages reaching out to our family in hopes that this was Joseph A. Pecora’s family — my brother and nephew are both Joseph A. Pecora and my dad and other brother are both Sylvester Joseph Pecoras.”

“My brother, Sylvester, and dad returned the call to Douglas and they had a very detailed conversation about the events leading up to and including my uncle’s death, his friendship with my uncle, and the promises they made each other prior to going into the battle that eventually took my uncle’s life,” she said.

‘A True Friend’

Udell, 74, was drafted into the army and began his two years of service in November 1965. It was that same year he met Joseph at basic training.

“At that time, we were living in a totally segregated society. Whites and Blacks were totally segregated,” Udell explained.

The military, however, worked to integrate the enlisted.

“We became friends, which was unusual for the time,” Udell said. “I’m a Black guy and Joseph was a white guy… and I mean friends, I’m not talking about acquaintances.”

The two bonded over their common love of sports and, per Joseph’s request, Udell even taught him boxing, so he could learn to defend himself with his hands.

“We’d discuss academics, education, philosophy, a broad range of subjects,” he said. “He was a very smart guy. We found out that we were very similar, even though we had totally different backgrounds.

“We got to the point where we could almost tell what the other one was thinking. We were that close of friends… We truly enjoyed being around each other as friends,” Udell said fondly.

On one occasion, Joseph proved his character to Udell as “a fair man” when the white soldiers, who greatly outnumbered the Black soldiers, tried to start an altercation with Udell purely based on the color of his skin.

“There was an incident in the barracks where the white boys had the intention of doing some harm to me and, of course, I rectified that quickly. The most amazing thing to them was that Pecora joined in to help me,” Udell said. “We got in a fist fight and Pecora was on my side. Then we had no more trouble… I knew at that point I had a true friend, because that’s not the way it normally would have gone on the day in 1965, 1966.”

The friends went through every stage of their military training together: eight to nine weeks of basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia, eight to nine weeks of advanced individual training at Fort Polk in Louisiana, then a few weeks of specialized training in preparation for being combat soldiers in Vietnam.

“For our specialty training we were [flown] some place, I think it was in South America. Maybe Panama, I’m not sure. Because we flew there in secrecy at night and there… was a replica of Vietnamese villages where we were at in the jungle,” Udell recalled.

After specialty training, they flew back to Fort Polk and received the orders that they would be going to Vietnam. Each person went home for ten days, then had to report to Oakland, California, before being flown to a reception station in Saigon, Vietnam.

Keeping A Promise

In Vietnam, Joseph and Udell were in the same tent and assigned to help the 25th Infantry Division, because the group had already lost so many soldiers.

Looking back on their assignment, Udell calls it a “suicide mission.”

Before taking part in combat, the two friends made a pact with each other in case one died that night.

“We made two promises. That is, if either one of us got killed we would contact the other one’s family and let them know what happened,” Udell said. “And we also promised each other that we would not allow, to the best of our ability, the Viet Cong to get the other one’s bodies, because they would do such horrible things to your body for propaganda… to really frighten the American soldiers.”

With dignity in his voice, he continued, “They didn’t get his body. His body was shipped home. I know that for a fact. I protected his body. I guarded his body. I got wounded seven times trying to keep the Viet Cong from getting his body. But I promised him, and I kept my promise.”

Five men died in battle that night, and Udell was the last person Joseph spoke to before his death.

For the rest of Udell’s service in Vietnam, he kept the memory of his friend with him through two mementos. One was a Catholic Rosary Joseph gave him that Udell, despite being Protestant, wore around his neck during his entire time in Vietnam to bring him comfort. The other was a custom dog tag accessory the two shared a special bond over.

“We both put a hole through a penny and placed it on our dog tag chain that we wore around our necks… He gave me a penny and I gave him a penny,” he recalled.

While Udell fulfilled the promise to protect Joseph’s body that day in Vietnam, the search to find and contact his friend’s family took more than half a century to complete.

The reason it took so long, he explained, was that another man in their military group had the same name as Joseph, so to distinguish the two, Joseph Anthony Pecora, Jr, became known as “James P.”

“That’s why it took me such a long time to find him, because I had been looking for James P,” Udell said.

Recently, when he was looking through his basic training book, he found a photo of Joseph and saw his full name written out. Once he discovered where he was from, he went on the computer to find information for him on the Vietnam Wall website.

He learned that Joseph was buried in Greenwich and soon was able to contact the family earlier this year to share his story.

“It took me 54 years to do it, but I did it,” Udell said. “It was important to me that I find his family before I died. I promised. And I’ve done that.”

Joseph’s Legacy Continues

Even before connecting with Udell, Pecora-Runkle and her family did their best to keep Joseph’s legacy alive by telling the next generation about him, including Pecora-Runkle’s children, who grew up in Newtown.

“Joseph Pecora had four siblings, who have had 16 nieces and nephews. These nieces and nephews have had 28 children. Three are named Joseph…” she shared. “Uncle Joey is alive in all of us.”

To this day, it makes her feel pride when people come up to her to tell her stories of their times with her uncle and say what a great man he was.

Pecora-Runkle has immense gratitude for Udell for getting in contact with her family and giving them solace in knowing what happened to her Uncle Joey the day he died, as well as having learned more about the content of his character.

“We felt very honored that Douglas lived up to the promise he made to my uncle,” she said. “Every service man that my dad ever spoke to — he would ask, ‘Did you know Joseph Pecora?’ and he looked for years [into] finding out how my uncle passed away. When Douglas called it fulfilled a dream my dad had in finding out the final moments of his death.”

She added, “The details are not important to anyone but my dad and his sister. But we all know that Uncle Joey died a hero — he got a bronze star with a ‘V’ [device, for valor], for trying to save his fellow platoon.”

To learn more about Joseph Anthony Pecora, Jr, and other fallen veterans, visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website at vvmf.org/wall-of-faces/39969/joseph-a-pecora-jr.