Photo: Kim Tunncliffe / WBZ News Radio
ATTLEBORO (WBZNewsRadio) - Attleboro Veterans Services Director Ben Quelle is working around the clock to find the family members of a sailor who was killed in action in the Pacific during World War II.
Hugh Farren was an Irish immigrant who joined the U.S. Navy on August 1, 1942. He died at the young age of 39, when his ship, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Liscome Bay, was hit by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943.
He was just one of 644 sailors to perish during the attack.
Farren was posthumously honored with a Purple Heart, that medal was found just last week in an elderly man's Attleboro home, but he has no recollection how it got there.
"I'm really just putting a call to arms out to anyone in the community who might be able to find something that could really give me a hand." Quelle told WBZ's Kim Tunnicliffe. "It's really a mystery."
In 1962, the state Legislature declared that a footbridge crossing Old Colony Avenue and Columbia Road in the vicinity of the Old Harbor Village Housing Project in Dorchester would be named for Farren.
WBZ's Kim Tunnicliffe (@KimWBZ) reports
Follow WBZ NewsRadio: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | iHeartmedia App