World War II display commemorates veterans in downtown Bristol

Bristol woman took her uncle’s collection and shared it with everyone

By Kristen Ray
Posted 11/11/18

Sunday nights were for the girls — at least that’s how it was at Pat Sullivan Fonseca’s house, during the height of World War II. Only six years old when her father and three uncles …

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World War II display commemorates veterans in downtown Bristol

Bristol woman took her uncle’s collection and shared it with everyone

Posted

Sunday nights were for the girls — at least that’s how it was at Pat Sullivan Fonseca’s house, during the height of World War II. Only six years old when her father and three uncles were sent off to fight overseas, Ms. Fonseca can still remember how the women in her family would gather around in her kitchen, playing cards and chatting about the war while her mother prepared for them all home-cooked Italian meals.

Then, once the war was over and her family all returned safely home, the time her father and uncles spent away suddenly ceased to be discussed.

“It was something that was never talked about,” she said.

It wasn’t until after her eldest uncle, Charles Sullivan, passed away that she came into the possession of an extensive collection of 100-plus original items he had kept from his time serving in the U.S. Army all those years ago. 

With the help of her daughter, Ms. Fonseca has put on public display many of those items in the window of Paper Packaging & Panache in time to commemorate Veterans Day this Sunday, Nov. 11. 


The secret life of Charles Sullivan

Though Ms. Fonseca has fond memories spending summers with her uncle in their hometown of Fall River in the years following the war, the memorabilia he held onto has allowed her to get to know him through an entirely new lens.

Trained with top marks as an airplane repair mechanic in the Carolinas, Mr. Sullivan joined the warfront in Germany, France and Normandy, as he worked to fix P-47 Thunderbolts that had crashed down on European soil. Any hints of potential horrors he’d seen from his time serving between 1942 and 1945 were never revealed in front of his niece.

“He was a fun guy to be around,” Ms. Fonseca recalls. 

Yet, unbeknownst to her, he would reunite with his fellow soldiers and their wives every year, and the sheer magnitude of the collection he had stowed away was “incredible.” There was a pamphlet on how to interact with the Germans, books of prayer and song. A pilot’s checklist for takeoff, newspaper clippings that Ms. Fonseca had blown up from different stages of the war, and countless photographs clued her in to his wartime day-to-day. 

While she personally found the collection to be interesting, Ms. Fonseca worried about the reception the display would receive from the community. That dissipated immediately while she was setting up this past weekend, when those who stopped to ask her about it thanked her and her daughter for putting it together.

“It’s doing what it’s meant to do and bringing it to the forefront,” she said.

Finding a permanent home

Once the display comes down next Monday, Nov. 12, Ms. Fonseca and her daughter will be searching for a new place for her uncle’s items to call home. Growing up in Massachusetts but having called Bristol home since 1966, she’s been open to having both places host the collection. The Bristol Art Museum has expressed interest in working with her, as has the town’s historical society, which brought up the possibility of combing their World War I display with her World War II one. If schools would be interested in her coming in to talk with students about its history, she’d be fine with that, too.

For now, though, she’s just happy to honor those who, just like her father and uncles, fought during those dark times and helped secure their nation’s freedom. 

“If it wasn’t for those people, none of us would be here today.”

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