The 27 Crusaders in Vietnam

Located infront of Father Judge High School, this memorial contains the names of the 27 alumni students who were killed in the Vietnam War. 

By Kieran Kelly 

A memorial depicting Michelangelo’s “Pieta'' resides outside the entrance to Father Judge High School in Northeast, Philadelphia. Carved in the granite memorial are the names of 27 young men who attended the school and lost their lives fighting in the Vietnam War. 

When the United States withdrew its final forces from Saigon and the Vietnam War ended in 1975, over 3,100 Pennsylvanians had lost their lives. Of these casualties, 646 came from the city of Philadelphia. From these 646, 64 attended Edison High School in North Philadelphia and another 27 attended Cardinal Dougherty. As these schools are now closed, Father Judge holds the grim distinction of having lost more men to the war than any other active high school in the nation. 

Joe Altimari, a Father Judge alumni and Vietnam Veteran himself, describes his alma mater as, “the poor boy’s prep school” as it lacked the prestige of Philadelphia’s other Catholic schools such as LaSalle or St. Joseph’s Preparatory School.  These were students who were “rough around the edges” and who came from blue collar neighborhoods with stay-at-home mothers and working fathers. Like many Americans, these students most likely could not locate Vietnam on a map and received whatever knowledge they possessed about Vietnam from Walter Cronike on the evening news. As the war escalated, however, an increasing number of Father Judge graduates were sent off to fight. 

Michael Giannini was one of Altimari’s neighbors and graduated Father Judge in 1961. Giannini was studying business administration and attending night classes at Temple University when he was drafted to fight in Vietnam in 1965. He served in the U.S. Army as a First Lieutenant until he was Killed-in-Action on March 16, 1967 in the Tay Ninh province. “It was the first military funeral I ever saw,” Altimari recalls as he watched military guards escort Giannini’s body out of his local parish followed closely by the young man’s parents. Giannini’s name now resides on the memorial located outside Father Judge as well as the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. 

Father Judge honors Michael Giannini’s sacrifice along with the other 26 alumni who passed with the memorial located outside the school as well as a patch containing the number “27” worn on all Father Judge athletic uniforms. Every Veterans Day, the school puts on special events in their memory. A 2019 documentary titled Remembering the 27 Crusaders  which features interviews with the families of the fallen and home video footage of those killed in the line of duty  serves as an act of remembrance. With these acts, the names of the 27 Crusaders will never be forgotten by the Father Judge community.