JOSEPH "MONKEY" ORLANDO • VIETNAM
Joseph “Monkey” Orlando, 77
Gloucester, MA
Born: 2/17/48
Born/Raised: Gloucester
Service: US Army
Unit: 101st Airborne
Rank: Spec. 4/Corporal
Dates of Service: 1968-1970
Commendations: Bronze Star
Gloucester has a few Joe Orlandos, but only one Joe “Monkey” Orlando. He got his nickname as a kid because he was always climbing trees. The son of a Gloucester fisherman, Anthony, and Jenny Orlando, the 1966 St. Ann’s graduate was drafted in 1968 and landed in the Army’s 101st Airborne. He did his basic training at Fort Dix before heading to Ben Hua, Vietnam for further training and then his assignment to an infantry support unit at Camp Eagle in Hue.
The night before he arrived at Camp Eagle, it had been overrun in an attack. “We needed to clean up the mess.” He remembers the camp at Hue being “hit every night.” “If anyone said they weren’t scared over there they were full of shit.” Joe lived up to his nickname during his tour by keeping an actual pet monkey named “Newey” while he was in Vietnam. “When something was going to happen, he’d grab right on to me.”
In June 1969 he was sent back stateside to Fort Dix where he was assigned to Graves and Registrations doing first notifications to families of KIA soldiers. He and an officer would make one or two notifications a day and he estimates he attended over 100 funerals. The experience dissuaded him from reupping when his time was up. “Keep your sergeant stripes.” He was out in January 1970.
He took a variety of jobs on his return to Gloucester, working at Sears & Roebuck Auto in Saugus and Peabody; the Cape Ann Tool Company, and he was a bar manager and three-time Commander at the Legion in Gloucester. He currently works at the Shaw’s Market on Eastern Ave.
In 1972 he married his St. Ann’s high school sweetheart, Lourdes Cecilio, with whom he had a daughter Bobbi Jo. While they split eight years later, he would meet his second wife, Diana Muise, and marry again in 1982 raising her two sons Paul and Jeremy. They’ve been married ever since and have nine grandchildren.
Joe served on the Gloucester City Council from 1983-1989 first as the Ward 3 councilor, then one term at-large, and finally he served one year filling the remaining term of Bob McCormick who died while in office. He’s photographed with a copy of the Gloucester Daily Times that featured his front page photo on his return from Vietnam.