Private 1st Class
Anthony Sconza

Feature from the Higgins Worker, Higgins Industries' employee paper, featuring the last photo Anthony Sconza’s father received from him. Anthony Sconza is shown (left) shaking hands with Earl Tauzier, a former next-door neighbor he happened upon in an Army hospital while in service. Gift in Memory of Arnold Schaefer, 2012.359.001.

Feature from the Higgins Worker, Higgins Industries' employee paper, featuring the last photo Anthony Sconza’s father received from him. Anthony Sconza is shown (left) shaking hands with Earl Tauzier, a former next-door neighbor he happened upon in an Army hospital while in service. Gift in Memory of Arnold Schaefer, 2012.359.001.

Marie Sconza had little idea of the brutal combat her son, Anthony, saw in the war. Anthony, just 20, died in action during the Italian Campaign in 1944, after seeing some of the war’s fiercest and deadliest fighting. His mother’s ignorance to it was no accident; in letters to his brother, Joseph, who was serving in the Navy, Anthony detailed the gruesome offensive and asked Joseph to keep his family in the dark.

Anthony did not immediately enter the war at its outset, though he certainly contributed. A New Orleans native, he worked as a shipfitter at the Higgins Industrial Canal plant. He told his parents in a letter that he’d received word from the plant that his job awaited him when he returned home, something he never got to reclaim.