MICHAEL FAVAZZA • VIETNAM WAR
Michael Favazza, 80
Methuen, MA
Born: March 19, 1945
Born/Raised: Gloucester, MA
Service: US Army
Rank: Spec. E-4 (Corporal)
Unit: Americal 82nd Artillery and the 25th Infantry Division
Mike Favazza was born and lived on Sibley Street until his family moved ‘down the fort’ to Commercial Street when he was eight. His father worked at a Peabody leather factory and drove tankers for Felicia Oil Company. His mother Jennie (Orlando) was a personal care attendant. He has a brother Peter and sister Sarah. He attended St. Ann’s through grammar school and then Gloucester High School from which he graduated in 1963 and then attended a trade school where he learned to be a meat cutter.
Uncle Sam called in September 1967, and Mike was drafted into the Army. Trained as a cannoneer at Fort Sill, OK and additional artillery training Fort Lewis, Washington, Mike was initially sent to Vietnam with the reconstituted 82nd Artillery Division of Americal in July 1968. Six months later he was transferred to the 25th Infantry. While standing in line at the PX on his first day in base camp in Cu Chi, “I saw this big guy, and we just stared at each other like we knew each other.” It turned out to be “Doc” Goodhue and they were both from Gloucester, “I knew his brother.”
They decided to concoct a story about them being cousins so they could get transferred to the same tank battery. Their commanding officer put them in the same tank. “At least I would be with someone I knew, make it easier. Doc was the gunner, I was the assistant gunner. Two Gloucester guys in Vietnam in the same tank. What’re the odds?” They served together for six months before Mike was sent home in July 1969.
Before being sent to Vietnam, Mike took some leave back in Gloucester and was hanging out at Good Harbor Beach when a young woman, with a wide-brimmed, aqua-blue hat walked past. Mike asked Linda Flanagan to walk down to the water’s edge with him and eventually for a date. He told her he was a Boston College hockey player, “I guess I was trying to impress her.” Unfortunately for young love, Vietnam got in the way and they went their separate ways.
Mike looked up Linda on his return to Gloucester two years later. She had married briefly, had a daughter Michelle and was living with a friend in Concord. Mike convinced her to come back to Gloucester and they married on Valentine’s Day 1971. Sadly, Michelle died at age six of brain cancer, but not before the Gloucester community pitched in and sent the family to Disneyworld. “Every day on her birthday, the family sits down and watches the film of the trip.”
Mike called on his meat cutting credentials and made a 40-year career working for various grocery stores: 1st National; Brown’s; Ceratani’s; Lavalle’s Restaurant Supplier; and Stop & Shop. With his brother Peter, he also reopened the Old Timers Bar in Gloucester in 1987 where he tended bar for ten years.
Linda and Mike have three more children: Danielle, Noelle and Ryan, and they have two grandkids, George and Wyatt. He now enjoys working around his house and spending time on his boat, Game Changer. He and Doc remain close friends to this day.