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Edward Dennery; owned coin laundries

Edward J.J. Dennery already had a leg up when he volunteered to become a World War II Navy pilot. His military record states that when he volunteered for the Navy in August 1943, three months before turning 19, he already had "flight training."

Edward J.J. Dennery
Edward J.J. DenneryRead more

Edward J.J. Dennery already had a leg up when he volunteered to become a World War II Navy pilot.

His military record states that when he volunteered for the Navy in August 1943, three months before turning 19, he already had "flight training."

It was more adventurous than that.

"When he was approximately 15 years old," son John said, Mr. Dennery happened to be working on the Vineland, N.J., farm of a relative when a barnstorming pilot landed "on a small grass field."

There and on other South Jersey fields, the barnstormer would take up the willing and the paying in his two-seater.

"It cost $5," John Dennery said, "and he took it once a week, because that was all he could afford."

For how long the barnstormer returned to that summer field is lost to memory, but, John Dennery said, "that's how he learned to fly."

On Wednesday, April 6, Mr. Dennery, 91, of Mantua, who retired in the early 1990s as an owner of a chain of coin laundries, died at home.

Born at his parents' home in Gloucester City, Mr. Dennery graduated from Gloucester Catholic High School in 1942 and attended college for a semester before joining the Navy.

He attended Navy classes for 16 weeks at the University of Pennsylvania, 13 weeks at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, and 12 weeks at the University of North Carolina before flying carrier-based torpedo bombers in the South Pacific.

He was discharged as a Navy ensign in September 1946 and ended his military career as a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve.

The son of dairy farmers, he used the GI Bill to earn a bachelor's degree in animal studies at Rutgers-Camden in 1950.

He worked part-time at the family's Dennery's Dairies in Gloucester City during his high school and college years and, with his bachelor's, became a co-owner.

The farm was sold in the late 1950s, and he and an aunt, Helen Congdon, formed Decco Quick Clean, a chain of laundries in Glassboro, Haddonfield, Oak Valley, Pitman, and Woodbury. He ran the firm from the early 1970s and sold it in the early 1990s.

Until he was 70, his son said, Mr. Dennery flew a 1960s single-engine Piper on weekend hops.

In 1953, he joined the Lions Club in Gloucester City. He served as its president in 1974-75 and was a winner of the local club's Melvin Jones Award, which honors the 1917 founder of Lions Club International.

It is not an honor frequently awarded. In the last 10 years, the Gloucester City club has given the award only three times, club secretary Ted Howarth said.

At his death, Mr. Dennery was the oldest and longest-serving member, known in his best years for working at all of the group's fund-raising events - and, Howarth said, "he always had the Jameson [whiskey] for the coffee."

He also helped raise funds to build the Gloucester City Swim Club, his son said.

Besides his son, Mr. Dennery is survived by son Patrick, daughter Eileen Mannion, and five grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife of 61 years, Joanne.

A visitation was set from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Tuesday, April 12, at St. Mary's Church, 426 Monmouth St., Gloucester City, before an 11 a.m. Funeral Mass there, with private interment.

Donations may be sent to www.e-clubhouse.org/sites/gloucestercity.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.mccannhealey.com.

wnaedele@phillynews.com

610-313-8134@WNaedele