Four months from this Veterans Day the family ofthe late Barnegat veteran Robert Charles Blanchard will observe the 75th anniversary of the World War II attack on the USS Franklin off the coast of Japan in 1945. On that day, Yonkers, N.Y., native Bob Blanchard received the Catholic sacrament of extreme unction for the first time.
The 22-year-old sailor had been in the Navy for just over two years, mostly at the Norfolk Naval Air Station.
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