MARCEL DONALD VANDENBOSCH
Marcel Donald "Don" VandenBosch, 87
Gloucester, MA
Born 1/23/1938
Born/Raised: NYC, NY
Service: US Army
Rank: Spec. 5/Sergeant
Dates of Service: 1956-1960
A New York boy born and raised, Marcel Donald "Don" VandenBosch, was the son of a construction supervisor, Emil, and Georgette, a homemaker. He had a twin brother, Emil Robert, and two sisters, Joan and Carol. He graduated from Bayside High School in 1956 and shortly thereafter his family moved to Florida. Don enlisted in the US Army. After basic training in Fort Jackson, SC, he embarked on a 35-week training program to learn radar operation and repair.
In what might be thought of as typical military decision making, upon graduation from radar repair training, he was shipped off to Fort Devens as part of the 4th Regimental Combat Team. There was no radar in sight. He wrote to the chief signal officer asking why he was there. The officer replied, “you want Guam or Korea?” He chose Korea and spent the next 13 months as part of the 1st Cavalry; 13th Signal Battalion attached to the 27th Ordinance Battalion along the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) where he operated and repaired ground radar used to detect movement along the very tense border. “Most of the people coming across were trying to escape North Korea.” “I got to Japan quite a bit. I had a good job.”
By 1958 he was back in New York finishing up his enlistment at Floyd Bennet Field until 1960. “Most of the guys I was with in Korea got sent to Vietnam. I had done two years of Navy Reserve prior to enlisting which exempted me from being sent to Vietnam.” He returned to Fort Lauderdale and got a job as an executive with a major swimming pool construction company building large-scale pools for colleges, universities and hotels. It was at one of these hotel pools where he met Sandy Spangler, a Florida State University student who was working as an extra on the film set of “Where the Boys Are.” The pair dated for a year and married in 1961, a match that has lasted 63 years, four children (Terri, John, Carol and Jill) and seven grandchildren.
Don made a life out of being a pool guy, moving back and forth between various companies in various cities. The family moved multiple times to Albany, NY, Kissimmee/Orlando Florida, Birmingham AL, and eventually to Peabody, MA and the NE Aquatics Company - a firm he joined in the late 1990s and worked at until his retirement in 2010. He and Sandy originally moved to Gloucester in 1999 to be near his daughter Carol Hedges, a 4th grade teacher at Beeman Memorial School. Until recently, their daughter, Jill VandenBosch Cahill served as the City of Gloucester’s Chief Administrative Officer.