US Navy Veteran Steven Seminerio Remembered On This Memorial Day. He And His Wife, Marilyn, Were Long Time Residents Here
By Bernie Marvin
Last Monday afternoon, May 18, 2026, the family of US Navy veteran Steven Seminerio of East Haverhill, along with area veterans of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and friends, came together at the Pike Cemetery to pay their final respects and honor the extraordinary life of Steve Seminerio.
He was a local minister who lived in this area for many years with his lovely wife, Marilyn, before retiring to Concord, Massachusetts. Steve died in February 2026 at the age of 100 years; Marilyn had predeceased him in March 2025 at the age of 97.
Steve was one of the last World War 2 veterans to grace our area before his death last winter. He was a man of peace and a man of war, having landed on the island of Okinawa on Easter Sunday, 1945, to fight the Japanese in their desperate defense of their homeland.
In the face of a massive invasion of Okinawa by military troops of the US Marine Corps and Army, the battle lasted more than a month before the opposition had been either killed or captured. It was the final land combat of the war, and a short time later, after two US atomic bomb attacks, Japan surrendered, and the war was finally over.
Steve Seminerio was a US Navy Combat Corpsman attached to the Marine Corps. After his combat tour, he returned home, obtained an education, met his lovely Marilyn, who would later become his bride, and the two wonderful people settled down to raise a family.
Lucky for us, Marilyn had relatives in East Haverhill, a place she used to visit as a youngster. Steve and Marilyn settled there later and became a thick and fast part of the Haverhill landscape.
Steve was proud of his service to his country and his role as a medical corpsman, which he performed while saving the lives of America’s fighting men. While living among us, he and Marilyn could be counted on never to miss a special event featuring food and friends. They were invited everywhere, as people in a wide area regarded this popular couple as personal and family friends.
Being part of the Memorial Day observances over the years since moving to Haverhill in 1978, then to Piermont in 2008, I have always attempted to include many of my veteran friends I got to know while living in the area. Steve Seminerio was certainly one of those friends who were always in attendance, whether for Memorial Day, July 4, or Veterans Day.
My first real Memorial Day, where I was included in the program, occurred on the traditional May 30 date in 1958, while I was in the Marine Corps. I volunteered for the assignment, and although my fellow Marines advised me many times to NEVER volunteer for anything whatsoever, I did volunteer for this one.
The 1958 Memorial Day detail meant special training, long hours of practice marching, and manual of arms for the ceremony that would see the return to the United States of the two unknowns who were killed during World War II and during the Korean War. They were to be carried into Arlington National Cemetery and interred there, forever remaining “Known Unto God.”
I was stationed at Marine Base Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, a small outpost located at the rear gate of Arlington National Cemetery. When I was not located in some other part of this angry world, several other Marines and I would spend hours in the cemetery, at all hours of the day and night, just walking, looking, and reading the inscriptions on hundreds of gravestones.
Sometimes, on a still night, we could hear the click of the honor guard’s heels as they marched their lonely post in all kinds of weather 24 hours a day, every day of the week. While in the cemetery with my Marine friends on those many occasions that I remember so well, we never spoke.
Silence and thought. This was our tribute of respect to the fellow fighting men and women who had given their ultimate sacrifice in so many causes, far from home. We knew it could happen at any time to any of us. (The Marine Corps did not disappoint me. Less than two months later, I was deployed to Beirut, Lebanon, for our country’s first action in the Middle East, a precursor to actions this country is still heavily involved with.
Members of our honor guard trained for many weeks for our Memorial Day assignment. When the day came, we formed our honor platoon and began our march over the winding, narrow paths of Arlington National Cemetery, down the gently sloping hills, where only the echo of our heels was heard by the thousands of observers as we marched by, on our solemn way to the Memorial Bridge, where we would await the twin caissons of the honored dead.
In Washington, DC, for that Memorial Day program, there were a million people, foreign dignitaries, and military honor guards of all the services of many lands, plus the president and vice president of the United States.
It was a proud assignment that morning. We remained at strict, rigid attention or at parade rest with our 10-pound M1 rifles and fixed bayonets, as the 92-degree temperatures melted, the glistening spit shone off our shoes. Streaming sweat saturated our dress blue uniforms. We observed many members of other honor guards and visiting civilians pass out, collapsing to the pavement as the rising heat took its toll all around us.
As the rumbling wooden World War I gun carriages and flag-draped caskets of two unknowns passed directly in front of our honor guard, I viewed the entire miles-long procession just under the swiveling stack of my perfectly perpendicular M-1 Garand rifle that I remember to this day was shaking just a bit.
It has been a long road from the days of my Memorial Day Honor Guard at Arlington National Cemetery in 1958 to the small hometown cemetery at East Haverhill in 2026, but my fellow veterans and I plan to continue paying tribute to our friends who have given so much to keep our country free.
God bless them all, may they rest in peace.
Steve and Marilyn Seminerio, formerly of East Haverhill prior to retiring to Concord, Massachusetts several years ago, relax and enjoy a snack at the annual Pike Farm Days celebration held in Pike about 10 years ago. The Seminerios were popular in the Haverhill area. Steven was recently interred with military honors in the Pike/East Haverhill Cemetery. He died in February 2026. Marilyn, his wife for 75 years, died in March 2025.
- The Bridge Weekly File/Bernie Marvin