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05/26/2021 08:30 AMAn active octogenarian and veteran who still serves his hometown, Richard “Dick” Greenalch, Sr., is humble, yet proud, of his service to his country during the Korean War era. While he didn’t ship out to serve overseas, Dick served as a U.S. Navy lieutenant junior grade between 1953 and ‘55, working as a naval engineer to rebuild America’s military infrastructure bases. As such, he was a witness to history who watched the nation’s first atomic submarine, USS Nautilus, launch from Electric Boat in New London in 1954.
On Monday, May 31, Dick will be honored by the Branford Veterans Parade Committee and the Town of Branford as grand marshal of the 2021 Branford Memorial Day Parade. Dick will be the featured speaker at Memorial Day ceremonies on the Town Green at 10 a.m. before leading the parade, which steps off at 10:30 a.m.
A self-educated student of military history, Dick counts two ancestors who served in the American Revolution and one who gave his life during the Civil War.
“I guess I’ve always been very involved in the study of history, and all the history of the wars that were fought by the United States,” says Dick. “When I was a kid, I followed every battle of World War II. I had all the maps.”
A native of Troy, New York, Dick attended military high school at La Salle Institute in his hometown and participated in the school’s Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program. Upon graduating, he attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, where Dick joined the Naval ROTC and earned his civil engineering degree.
“When I graduated in June of ‘53, I was in the Civil Engineer Corps of the Navy. I was stationed down in New York City, and I spent lot of time in Connecticut,” he says. “At that time, the Navy was spending a lot of money upgrading all the plants that produced planes and ships [etc.], because everything had been shut down after World War II. The companies weren’t going to invest the money, so the Navy needed to spend some money to build up these facilities, and our job was to make sure the money was spent properly.”
Dick coordinated efforts to build or build up facilities including those of Grumman, Kaman, Pratt & Whitney, and Electric Boat.
“In the case of Electric Boat, I was involved in fitting out the launch ways. The launch ways were already in for the Nautilus, but I was involved in working on the ones for the Seawolf, the sister ship of the Nautilus,” says Dick. “And when Nautilus was christened in ‘54, I was at that christening of the first atomic submarine. And then, a few months after that, the Seawolf was also launched and christened. So I was involved in all that kind of stuff. That was my duty, during the Korean War.”
Dick’s first job out of the Navy put him to work on the construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike for two years, followed by joining an international engineering and construction firm in New York City.
“I did a lot of traveling throughout United States and the world for that firm,” says Dick. “Then I left that to come to Branford in 1963, and I’ve been a resident ever since.”
Dick and his wife of 67 years, Kathleen, raised their family of four children at their home in Pine Orchard and continue to be active members of the Pine Orchard community. Dick is a past president of the Pine Orchard Association and currently serves on its executive board. He’s also a past president, and a past treasurer, of the Pine Orchard Yacht & Country Club.
The Greenalch’s four children include oldest son Richard Jr., a lawyer with the Connecticut State Attorney’s Office and also the recently retired commandant of Second Company, Governor’s Foot Guard, based in Branford. Their son Gary is an engineer with Munger Construction in Branford. Both of the Greenalch’s daughters are educators, including Joanne Kardok, who taught at Walsh Intermediate School before relocating to Massachusetts, and Colleen Lepre, an English teacher at Branford High School (BHS).
Career and Community Service
While Dick was living and working in New York, he attended Fordham University and earned his law degree.
“I wanted to go to school and I had an interest in law, so I went to law school instead of getting a masters” degree in engineering, he says. “I worked days and went to the evening school at Fordham. I passed the New York bar, and later on, when I came to Connecticut, I passed the Connecticut bar.”
Although Dick continued working as an engineering professional instead of turning to practicing law, he provided 25 years of service to the American Arbitration Association as an arbitrator on construction contracts.
In 1971, Dick and his partners established their own company, Pacesetter Construction, which had offices in Newington and Branford until 2014. While he could have retired, Dick elected to keep working, taking a job with Munger as a civil/structural engineer about six years ago.
“I’m only working part time, because I am 88 years old,” he says, laughing. “I think keeping active helps a lot. I work every day, five hours a day, roughly. I’ve been working at home during the pandemic, so I’ve learned how to do Zoom!”
Dick also is on Zoom for meetings of Branford’s Inland Wetlands Commission, for which he’s served as a member, appointed by the Board of Selectmen, since 2015. Since 2018, Dick has also served his hometown as a member of the Blackstone Library Building Committee. Several years back, Dick also served on the BHS Renovation Building committee, during the school’s most recent renovations.
Honored as Grand Marshal
Dick says it was a quite an honor and a surprise to learn that he would be serving as the grand marshal of Branford’s 2021 Memorial Day Parade. Since learning of the honor, he’s been collecting his thoughts on the remarks he’ll give on the Branford Green during the day’s ceremonies.
“I’ve always felt a strong feeling towards the military, and I was just happy to offer my services to the country in a small way,” says Dick. “I feel it’s important to honor those people that did die in the service to our country [including] the kids today that give their lives, or come back wounded. So I’ll probably walk through a little bit of the history of the wars we’ve fought as a country where our men and women died, and summarize it by reaching out to the people as to what we should get out of a Memorial Day service, and what we can do for our community and our country.”