Patrick Joseph Nolan, Sr. (P.J.) was born in Nashville, Tennessee on April 15, 1889.
He grew up to be a plumber.
By the 1920s, he owned his own successful plumbing firm, frequently advertising his firm in the local newspapers.
But then came the Depression. P.J. lost his business. Then he lost his home, being evicted along with his wife and 9 children. For a time, the family got by on the money the boys made on their daily paper routines.
P.J. eventually found a new home nearby, as well as a job as the Night Watchman at St. Thomas Hospital. P.J. left his night watchman job during World War II to work on the Manhattan Project. He worked for Hanley & Company in Oak Ridge for 15 months.
When the war began, all but P.J. Nolan Sr.’s youngest son left home, joining the war effort. The oldest, Tommy, worked in a defense plant in South Carolina. He had asthma and could not serve in the military. The second oldest, Eugene, enlisted in the Army before Pearl Harbor and landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He was involved in the liberation of the Port of Cherburg, as well as the city of Paris. He was then wounded in France and received a Purple Heart.
Within days after he returned to his unit, while fighting near the Seigfreid Line on September 22, 1944, he was wounded a second time and died before he could be removed from the battlefield. He is buried in the Henri-Chapelle U.S. Military Cemetery in Belgium.
Two of the younger sons of P.J. Nolan, Sr., joined the Navy.
P.J. (Joe) Nolan, Jr. (my father), at age 17, got his parents’ permission to enlist and he served three years in the Pacific on a supply ship later converted into a troop carrier. In September 1945, he and his shipmates sailed into the port of Nagasaki within weeks of A-bomb blast there. They evacuated POWs, including some in captivity since the fall of Wake Island in early 1942.
The last of P.J.’s 4 sons in the service during WWII, Frank, was inducted as soon he graduated high school in the spring of 1945. While his time in uniform was brief, like his brother Joe, Frank knew he was scheduled to be a part of the invasion of Japan until the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.
After WWII, P.J. Nolan, Sr. became a Plumbing Inspector for the old City of Nashville. He died in May 1954 at age 65.