WILLIAM "BILL" LOIACANO • COLD WAR
William “Bill” Loiacano, 85
Gloucester, MA
Born 9/4/1940
Born/Raised: Gloucester, MA
Service: US Army
Rank: Private
Dates of Service: 1962-1964
Vietnam and Korea may have been the hot wars of the mid 20th Century, but brewing in the background was the Cold War the United States was waging with the USSR. The coldest place to be on the front lines of this war was Alaska, and that’s precisely where Bill Loiacano found himself as a private in the US Army with the 562 Combat Engineers.
The born and raised kid from Beach Court, down the Fort, is the son of Joseph Loiacano and Lucy (Parisi) and brother to Phil and Nina. Dad was a fisherman and mom cared for the family. He attended and graduated from Gloucester High School in 1959. A member of ROTC, the basketball, football and wrestling teams, Bill would, after his miliary service, become a competitive body building and weightlifting. In September 1962, he took home the trophy for Mr. Gloucester. A photo of him was featured in a body building magazine.
In 1962, after a couple years of painting and carpentry, he was drafted into the Army and sent north, very north. His combat engineers built bridges, log cabins, a bridge over a lake, at times enduring temperatures up to 69-degrees below zero. He was in Anchorage when the region was hit by a 9.2 earthquake in 1964. He sent his mother a telegram that he was okay. After his tour in Alaska, he came home to Gloucester
At a dance at the St. Peter’s Club, he met and danced with Anna Bertolino. They married in 1974, “the best move I ever made. The girl is phenomenal, not good, phenomenal.” The couple have three boys, Eric, Joe and Bill, and six grandchildren between them. His friend Bill Hilche convinced him to take the fire department exam, and he spent 30 years with the Gloucester FD. An errant slide down the firepole one day threatened to end his career, but he continued until 2002. “I was a bull.”