Those Who Served

05/02/2026

Fred Kepler, 96
Gloucester, MA
Born: 2/3/30
Born/Raised: Lewistown, PA & Cleveland, OH
Service: US Army
Unit: 82nd Airborne/505th Airborne
Rank: Cpl (T)
Dates of Service: 1950-1953

One of three children born to Charles and Celia Kepler, Fred Kepler grew up in Lewistown, PA and spent his teen years working as a soda jerk in the family’s corner store, Kepler’s Corner. When his mother died in 1947, Fred moved in with his grandparents to finish and graduate from John Adams High School in Cleveland, Ohio in 1949.

Fred enlisted in the Army in 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War. His 18-year-old brother Ken decided to enlist as well. As a result, they both ended up in the same unit of the 82nd Airborne together and spent the entirety of their service together. Originally expecting an immediate assignment to Korea after basic training, the Army instead opted to keep their division stateside at Fort Bragg. When he wasn’t training as the designated sniper, or working as a clerk in the offices, Fred and the rest of the 505th Parachute Infantry Division would travel around doing jumps for public relations and VIP events. By the time Fred left the service in 1953 he had 28 jumps notched on his belt.

At the end of his enlistment, Fred worked for an enamel countertop company. In 1955, he met and married Charlotte Fisenne in Cleveland. He graduated from Fenn College in 1960 after attending night school. The couple had two children, Fred Jr. (Freddie) and Michelle Alaine Kepler (Shell). Freddie became a film editor, and Shell spent 23 years as soap opera character, Amy Vining, on General Hospital.

Fred took a job working for Nestle in White Plains, NY, as an accountant and became a literal “bean counter” as Nescafe was running a coffee ad campaign called “43 Beans in Every Cup.” A move to Singer Corporation paid for his master’s in economics from Fordham and a move to Chattanooga, TN in 1970. Next came a move to a Los Angeles tire manufacturer. Fred and Charlotte bought a florist shop for her to run, which she did until her death in 1973. In 1976 Fred took a job at Gulf & Western in NYC for three years and one NY City Marathon and finally landed in Reading MA working for Schraft’s.

Answering a letter in 1983 in the “Singles Almanac” introduced Fred to sixth-grade schoolteacher, Lenore Schofield. Prior to meeting Fred, Lenore had been a schoolteacher on Army bases in Germany and Guantanamo Cuba. The couple married in 1984 and settled for a time in Wenham before moving to Magnolia in 1994. In 1990, at the age of 60, Fred donated one of his kidneys to his son Freddie. While Lenore continued to teach school on the North Shore, Fred attended Beverly H.S. Adult Ed to learn to type and launched his own Kepler Indexing Service – a book indexing company that he ran for more than ten years. Now Fred spends much of his free time as a painter, participating in Plein Airs and exhibiting his work in various art fairs. They’ve been married for nearly 42 years.
Cape Ann Veterans Services Jason Grow Photography Jason Grow

04/02/2026

Martin Ray, 79
Gloucester, MA
Born: 10/16/1946
Born/Raised: Westpoint, NY/Various US Army postings
Service: US Army
Unit: Airborne & Ranger School, 538 Engineering Battalion (Thailand), Germany, 525th Military Intelligence (Vietnam)
Rank: Captain
Dates of Service: 1968-1972

When Colonel John Ray felt a need to correct his young son Martin, it was at full military attention. Such was the world of a career military family. Col. Ray, then a military law teacher at Westpoint Academy, came from a long line of military achievers including his three brothers and his father, and his son was going to grow up with the same sense of discipline. Martin’s parents, John and Tova, met in Europe towards the end of WWII. John had been wounded during the Battle of the Bulge, and held as a POW in both Tunisia and Germany before escaping twice. Tova was a Women’s Army Corps nurse from the Boston area serving in England and France.

Their marriage would include raising three children at multiple postings around the country, and the world, including Westpoint, Burma, Japan, California and New York. In high school Martin took correspondence courses from the University of Nebraska and finished his high school career as a senior at the Cambridge School – “It was one of the first big shocks I had.”

The next big shock was his first year as a med-school student at Johns Hopkins Medical School, “I got crushed.” He changed to International Relations and four years later, freshly degreed, he joined the Army Engineers to fulfil his ROTC commitment. “I thought it best to get out in the field and do something with my hands.”

Martin completed Airborne and Ranger Schools and in 1969 was assigned as a lieutenant to the south coast of Thailand and the 538th Engineering Battalion. Fifteen months into his assignment, the Army decommissioned his unit. He applied to go to Germany aware that he was stalling being posted to Vietnam. In 1971, as a captain, he volunteered to go to Vietnam fully expecting to be deployed with the 101st Airborne. Instead, he was assigned to the 525th Military Intelligence Division in Saigon. He spent the next year compiling geographic intelligence studies for upcoming operations, and taking photography classes for himself – “a total life-changer.”

Martin’s return to the world in 1972 was via Lanesville in Gloucester. His grandparents had a place where he’d visited growing up during summer vacations, and his parents retired there from his father’s military career. He got a job as a school bus driver and built a darkroom thinking he was going to be a photographer. He began a Master’s program in History at Salem State, inherited his family property in Lanesville and built a house and a garden setting his roots in Gloucester. Landscape gardening became a career he pursued for 37 years, focusing on the use of granite as a sculptural focus in the design of his landscapes. In 1974 he married folk singer Dorothy Cahill and they had two sons, Marco and Patrick. That marriage ended after 11 years. In 1985 he married Kay Rubin and they’ve been together ever since. They have seven grandchildren. For the past twelve years Martin has maintained a blog called Notes from Halibut Point, his observations of natural and social history on Cape Ann. He’s currently the president of Gloucester Cultural Initiative and is a member of Veterans for Peace.

Cape Ann Veterans Services Jason Grow Photography Jason Grow

14/01/2026

This man exuded gentlemanliness. Ninety-nine is a pretty good run - a life well lived. Farewell Charles Steiner.

12/12/2025

All the portraits and all the stories are now online: https://jasongrow.com/PORTFOLIOS/THOSE-WHO-SERVED/
Jason Grow Photography

07/12/2025

FINAL WEEK!!!! This will be the last week for the Those Who Served Veterans portrait exhibition at Gloucester's City Hall -- 12/8-12/12 during regular business hours and also on SATURDAY December 13th during the Middle Street Walk. So if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, this would be the time.
Capt. Lester S. Wass American Legion Post 3 Cape Ann Veterans Services Good Morning GloucesterJason Grow Photography Awesome Gloucester

18/11/2025

Thank you, Joey, for stopping by and doing this!

page For The Project- Website- People are welcome to bring copies of photos or memories of the vets in their lives and attach them to a couple of “memory walls” — please don’t bring origin…

10/11/2025

Compelling letter/speech by Mark Nestor. He gave this at the opening of the Those Who Served exhibit at City Hall on Saturday and it's in today's Gloucester Daily Times:

On Nov. 11, this nation honors its living veterans on Veterans Day. But this Veterans Day has a special meaning. Fifty years ago on May 7, 1975, President Gerald Ford

22/10/2025

Allan Milton “Doc” Goodhue, III, 77
Gloucester, MA
Born: April 4, 1948
Born/Raised: Gloucester, MA
Service: US Army
Rank: Spec. E-5 (Sergeant)
Unit: 25th Infantry, 155th Artillery, Cu Chi

“Doc” Goodhue III’s father, “Doc” Goodhue 2nd was a WWII Navy veteran and his mother, Alma Bouchie from Nova Scotia, was one of 12 children in her family. No one’s quite sure where the nickname “Doc” came from, except that it came from his grandfather, Allan “Doc” Goodhue the first. Allan Goodhue was born in 1948, and grew up in Riverdale Park in Gloucester, “the best place you could grow up in your whole life.” His namesake father was a custodian in Gloucester schools and his mother, Alma, was a waitress at Bob’s Clam Shack.

When Allan was ten, his family lived on Trask Street and his house caught fire. In the commotion, his brother Mark was left in his crib. Allan rushed back into the burning building and rescued his brother.

He attended St. Ann’s and graduated from Gloucester High in 1966. As part of requirements then, he was in the ROTC, “I think Gloucester having ROTC saved a lot of guys.” In addition to Mark, Allan had another brother, Kevin, from his mother Alma. After her death in 1973, his father remarried and he has two half-brothers, Justin and Jeremy, from his stepmother Maryann.

Drafted in 1967, at 19, he was trained at Fort Sill and shipped off to Cu Chi, Vietnam, with the 25th Infantry, 155th Artillery. One day standing in line at the PX, he thought he recognized someone in line. That guy turned out to be Mike Favazza, a Gloucester guy a couple of years older than Allan, but friends with his brother. “We made up a story about being cousins” and got assigned to the same tank. “One Christmas they dropped us in a rubber plantation - the Michelin Rubber Company – we couldn’t see very well. We had to guard it. They lifted the tank with a helicopter crane and dropped us into the plantation.” Mike wanted a souvenir of one of the flare parachutes, “we were screaming at him to get back in the tank.”

Allan left Vietnam in April 1969 and spent the remainder of his tour training soldiers at Fort Hood before coming home to Gloucester. On his return, he took a battery of Civil Service exams and landed a position at Gloucester Schools where he worked for 28 years. He met Gail Parisi at a dance at the St. Peter’s Club and the pair married in 1972. In addition to working for the Gloucester Public Schools, Allan also worked at Greeley’s Funeral Home and managed The Mills apartment complex.

Allan and Gail have been married for 53 years and had three children, Peter, Stacy and Ben. Ben died in 2021 at the age of 46. They have five grandchildren, Emme, Augustave, Allan, Margaret and Charlotte. In retirement, Allan “hangs around with guys in the same boat as me. We meet every day at McDonalds.”

22/10/2025

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.

16/10/2025

A little over three weeks from now, Kyrouz Auditorium in Gloucester's City Hall will host the photos and stories of Cape Ann Veterans who served in the Korean, Vietnam and Cold Wars. The opening reception begins at 11am (until 1p) and is open to the public. [Saturday, Nov. 8th 11-1] Exhibit will remain up during business hours until Dec. 12th

12/10/2025

It's all coming together..... pencil in November 8th at 11am on your calendars....

10/10/2025

Just had a whole company of Veterans prints arrive on my doorstep! Put Saturday November 8th 11-1 on your calendar for the opening of Those Who Served at Kyrouz Auditorium, Gloucester City Hall. It’s going to be great.