Scholarship named for North Bend veteran Joe Crecca

Published 1:08 pm Monday, May 7, 2012

To promote continuing education after graduation from high school, the Bloomfield High School Class of 1958, Bloomfield, N.J., will award the first annual Joseph Crecca Scholarship Award to a deserving student beginning with the class of 2012.

The award will be presented at the Class of 1958 annual luncheon,  May 19.

Crecca, a North Bend resident, was a U.S. Air Force pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war.

He graduated from Bloomfield High School in 1958.  Graduating from the Newark College of Engineering (NCE) as a mechanical engineer, Crecca served as fighter pilot during the Vietnam war. On his last mission, en route to the target, he was shot down, captured and held as a prisoner of war at the “Hanoi Hilton” in North Vietnam for over six years.  Crecca was repatriated in 1973, at which time he held the rank of Major.

Crecca has often stated that during his grueling captivity, he realized that it was imperative that he keep his mind busy. He thought back to his high school class of 1958, his teachers and his college years.  He said that his teachers “didn’t merely teach me the subject matter, such as mathematics; they taught me to think!” His “sincere hope is that our young Americans today will feel similar admiration for and receive equally intense inspiration from their own teachers.”

On April 2,  the Township of Bloomfield read a proclamation declaring April 9 as National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day. Crecca was selected by the Bloomfield Veterans of Foreign War Post #70 to receive this recognition