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Court Employees Contribute to North Berkshire Veterans

Veterans Agent Stephen Roy checks out the handmade scarf sets knitted by a former Trial Court employees.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Local veterans in need can look forward to a merrier Christmas this year as the piles of donations at City Hall continue to grow.

Bags and boxes of canned and boxed foods, quilts, jackets, scarves, hats and gloves, and a thick envelope full of gift certificates were delivered to the Veterans' Office on Wednesday morning from the local court system, thanks to Bonnie Fachini and Tori Wilhelm of the Probation Department.

The two had been gathering donations from District and Juvenile court employees and friends for about month and transported the goods over with the help of the Office of Community Corrections' Trial Court Community Service Program.

"Last year, we collected donations for the Louison House but Tori suggested we do the veterans this time," said Fachini. The donations included several sets of hand-knitted scarves, mittens and hats by a former colleague.

They also collected for Moments House this year.

Wilhelm, who is also the veteran's liaison at the courts, said she hoped to provide more awareness that veterans can utilize the office.

Clarksburg World War II Casualty Coming Home; Towns Hold Memorial Services

By Tammy Daniels & Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:14PM / Sunday, May 26, 2024

Clarksburg holds memorial service with students from Clarksburg School reading the Gettysburg Address and 'In Flanders Fields.' See more photos here. 

CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Erwin Shaftsbury King's ambition was to join the Marines and six weeks after Pearl Harbor, he was on his way to Parris Island.

 

King was a graduate of the town's old Center School and Drury High in North Adams. He'd seemed to have an affinity for adventure and difficulty — not only his desire to rush to arms for his country but his unexpected arrival when the family car broke down on Aug. 11, 1924, in the Vermont town that gave him his middle name.

 

He apparently excelled during basic training, earning medals for bayonet work, shooting and jiu jitsu. He'd hoped for leave in March to visit family but was shipped out immediately to the Pacific, at least that's where his family assumed he was.

 

King wrote intermittently but couldn't tell his parents, Erwin C. and Emelia LaFountain King of West Road, where he was or what he was doing.  

 

In October, they got a letter that so many parents would come to dread — their son, Marine Private 1st Class Edwin S. King, had been killed in action on Sept. 24, 1942. Later they would learn their son had been killed in an ambush during the Battle of Guadalcanal, the first major campaign against the Empire of Japan.

 

A year later they would receive his posthumous Purple Heart. 

 

In the 1942 town report the dedication to him reads, "Today he rests with honor on a sandy sunlit coral reef in a farflung corner of the tropics." That sandy island was supposed to be temporary but King never came home. There were two failed attempts in the 1940s to recover him and nine other comrades who perished.