Peter Gondorchin VET

Peter Gondorchin came into the world on the first of June, 1915, a farmer’s son on the pine‑ringed shore of Lake Mille Lacs — the first American generation of a Rusyn family that had swapped the Carpathian mountains for the Minnesota north woods.

In the autumn of 1940, with Europe already burning, he put his name to the draft rolls at Onamia, and the Army carried him across an ocean to Italy. There the story slips into legend: the family still tells how Peter went AWOL to win his Italian bride. He married Iris Belli of Rome and brought her home — she followed in 1946 on one of the very first war‑bride ships out of Naples, while he sailed on ahead. Twice in the years after they went back together to walk the streets of her city. When he died in 2002 they laid him down beside her beneath the white stones of Fort Snelling.