Bernard Corcoran and the ‘Fighting 69th’

From Dillonstown to WW1 trenches

WHAT a man Bernard J. Corcoran was.

He was 88 when he passed away in the 1970s but he was a blind WWI veteran and was a native of Dillonstown, Annagassan. He had lived in Baltimore.

He went to New York in 1911 and at the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted in the United States Army, and was wounded and blinded on July 28, 1918, at Chateau Thierry while serving with the renowned. New York “Fighting 69th” Regiment of the Rainbow Division.

Following his service disability he was assigned to the army Hospital for the blind, which was established at “Evergreen,’’ presently Loyola College. On his discharge, he became a resident of Maryland, and moved to Catonsville in 1932.

He was a member of the American Legion Post No. 25, and the Doyle-Dickey Post No. 163, Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was also a member of the Disabled American Veterans.

The son of Peter Corcoran and Catherine Conlon Corcoran The Castle Dillonstown and the widower of Ethel Murphy Corcoran and Mary Komenda Corcoran, he was survived by his daughters, Catherine Corcoran Lewis, Margaret Corcoran Gallagher, Mrs. Julia Lyons, Dillonstown, and four grandchildren.

Any more detail on the life and times of Bernard Corcoran I wonder?