D-Day veteran Tom Scardino recently decided to resign his position as commander of Adolf Block VFW Post 1305 because he was fighting a battle against glaucoma.
But he’s recanted his resignation as his fellow veterans have offered their help to keep him as commander.
“They didn’t want me to go,” Scardino said. “It’s like a brotherhood. It’s a good feeling. I didn’t want to feel that I let them down.” 
With his blindness advancing, Scardino, 91, felt he could no longer adequately represent the Mineola VFW Post at official functions as he had as commander for nearly five years. He said he was embarrassed during a ceremony at Mineola High School last year when he presented a certificate to the school’s principal instead of the student being honored.
“I can communicate but I can’t see,” Scardino said.
In recent months Scardino had been telling his five active VFW comrades someone else needed to take command, but no one volunteered. Without a commander, the VFW Post could have lost its charter and been disbanded or been forced to consider an idea broached last year to merge with Williston Park VFW Post 1688. Scardino said he urged his comrades to consider the merger.
But last week when Vietnam veteran Lou Pinto, the VFW Post’s chaplain, heard Scardino was about to relinquish command, he called Scardino to assure him that he and the other Post members would assist him at official functions so he could still command.
“I told him to hang in there. And I told him there are people around him who will help him out,” Pinto said. “He was so dedicated to this, I didn’t want to see him just step away.”
Pinto said he admires Scardino’s courage in maintaining command while coping with his blindness and other medical problems. The Mineola vets uniformly feel good about maintaining VFW Post 1305 by retaining the commander they respect.
“He’s very enthusiastic. He’s very into it. He’s a good man,” said Gabe Parajos, one of Scardino’s brother vets.
“He’s got a lot of heart and a lot of ideas,” said Felice Delape, quartermaster of VFW Post 1305.
Parajos and Delape said they’ll assist Scardino in any way they can.
With his decision to remain commander, Scardino said he’s dropped the idea of merging with the Williston Park VFW. He said the Mineola VFW members didn’t really favor the merger, which would have also meant merging assets with Williston Park from the sale of a building the Mineola VFW sold years ago.
VFW Posts all over Long Island are facing common problems of aging memberships and difficulties recruiting alienated young veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to join their ranks. Delape said the Mineola VFW currently has 36 lifetime members, down from 102 when he joined in 1989.
Scardino recruited four new members in his first year as commander, but those Iraq and Afghanistan vets have since dropped out of the organization. Historically, he said, most of the members were World War II veterans, whose ranks naturally dwindled, and Vietnam vets who joined in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
“After 2001, nobody wanted to join,” Scardino said.
Scardino joined in 1998, following the lead of fellow D-Day vet Ray Vaz. He took command in 2012, after Vietnam veteran Manny Grilo moved to Pennsylvania after 13 years as commander.
Scardino and Vaz landed on Utah Beach in successive waves as part of the U.S. Army 90th Infantry Division—known as the “tough hombres”—during the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944.
They were living a few miles from each other in Mineola when they met, 60 years after hitting that Normandy beach under heavy German fire, and realized their shared experience. “It was like finding a brother,” Scardino said.
Last year, Scardino and Vaz became members of the New York State Senate Hall of Fame, which recognizes vets who have distinguished themselves in military and civilian life, after being nominated by Sen. Jack Martins. Scardino ultimately earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his World War II service.
One month after D-Day in a battle for the strategic town of St. Lo, Scardino was hit by machine gun fire in the right arm and hand, and then shrapnel in his right thigh and elbow from mortar fire in the field hospital where he was taken.
Scardino’s rehabilitated his elbow throwing lightweight baleens—target balls used in bocce—in a Norfolk, VA bowling alley. He graduated to regulation bowling balls as his arm strengthened. He got so good that between 1963 and 1967, while still in the garment business, Scardino went on the Professional Bowlers Association tour with such stars as Don Carter and Lou Campi. He said he didn’t hit the “big money,” but he enjoyed competing.
Nearly 72 years after D-Day, he still has flashbacks about combat experiences that have never left him.
Scardino’s antidote has been visiting veterans at the Veterans Authority Hospital in Northport to help other vets for the past 18 years. He said hospital duty and the work he does as post commander are “therapy” to keep his mind at peace.
“It takes my mind off any physical problems and my thoughts about the war,” he said.
