Ron Woods now lives in northern Virginia — NoVa — though he is originally from Kearny. Earlier this year, when he learned of the Kearny Hometown Heroes banner program, he purchased one for Private First Class (PFC) Malcolm C. Bindon, of Kearny, who was killed just days after the Battle of Iwo Jima began during World War II. That was Feb. 26, 1945, the final day of the five week, vicious battle, that took almost 7,000 American lives — and that nearly took 19,000 Japanese lives.
Woods wanted to be sure Bindon was forever remembered for his ultimate sacrifice so many decades ago.
Enter two of Bindon’s surviving family members, who, though not locals, had no idea their uncle was honored with a banner in Kearny. Woods took care of that, reaching out to both Susan Jubenville, of Granby, Massachusetts, and her sister, Nancy Neff, of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, both Bindon’s nieces.
The two sisters, along with their spouses, recently hopped on an Amtrak Train to Newark Penn Station on Tuesday, Oct. 29 for a whirlwind, six-hour journey. After arriving at around 11 a.m. that day, they first visited a cemetery in Bloomfield. Then they came to Kearny, where they were able to see Bindon’s banner, located high above and right outside Mr. Nino’s III on Kearny Avenue, where the foursome had lunch that afternoon.
After they dined and admired the banner that honored their uncle, they spent time with The Observer to tell Malcolm’s story — and why it was important to the both of them that he is remembered, despite the reality they only knew him through photos and stories, having never had a chance to meet him before he met his demise.
“Back in May, we received a letter and we weren’t sure what to make of it at first,” Jubenville says. “It was very nice, very respectful, so I did a little searching online and didn’t find anything bad about Woods. Nancy was in the middle of a move, so I sort of took over the coordinating. I sent him an email and it bounced back.
“It turned out he had given me an incorrect address. So I waited a little bit longer, finally called him, and that’s when we made the connection. I would think it would be a month after we received a letter, perhaps we would finally connect. It was then we started to communicating and he asked if we’d be willing to share what information we had. He (Malcolm) was very much a presence, even though we never knew him.”
Once the sisters realized they’d met someone special in Woods, it hit Nancy that a similar banner program existed in South Kingstown. It was then they knew they’d have to come to visit Kearny. It all brought up a lot of passed-down memories of their uncle.
“We remember our grandparents very well and it it meant a lot,” Niff says. “They didn’t talk about it a lot, but we had their pictures all the time. We were very close with our grandparents, his parents, and this was their hometown. When my grandfather retired, they moved to Avon-by-the-Sea. And that’s where we spent our summers as children for over 10 years. But they spoke of living on Highland Avenue until 1959.”
Sadly, when Malcom died, it would be around a month before his family learned of his death.
“They were a tight-knit family, but it was just devastating when they found out, as it would be for any family,” Jubenville says. “But Ron sent us photos of the telegram the family received upon his death and that was extraordinary to see.”
But just who was this private first class?
The sisters knew what they knew from oral tradition passed down over the years.
Bindon graduated from the January 1940 class of Kearny High School. He joined the military on his own accord, likely because that was what most men did in that era, when patriotism was extraordinarily high. While it was Bindon’s hope to make a career of the military, that wasn’t in the cards — so instead, he re-enlisted for the war.
Though he had no idea where this would take him, he wound up leaving New Jersey early in 1945 for San Diego, then to Hawaii and ultimately to Iwo Jima. Bindon was posthumously awarded a Presidential Unit citation (with ribbon bar and one star) for serving as a member of the assault troops, 5th Amphibious Corps, according to Woods. Meanwhile, after his death, Bindon’s father did not want his remains returned to the Garden State and so the sisters say he was buried at the Punchbowl Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
And while the sting of Malcolm’s death remained with them for a long time, Jubenville says his parents did ultimately make the journey to Hawaii to visit his gravesite in the 1990s.
In all, both Jubenville and Niff are grateful to Woods for bringing all of this to their attention and for being able to visit the banner site, too, of a man they never met, but clearly both loved with great fondness.
“To imagine nearly 100 years hence, you know? Who will be remembering them? I think it’s touching that there still are opportunities to remember our ancestor,” Jubenville says. “This was an opportunity for us to be here and remember him and dig out all the photos and dig out some letters. And as much as we knew, just going through this recently, we’ve learned more. It was all an overwhelming experience. It’s also been such a pleasure to get to know Ron Woods. If it weren’t for Ron Woods, we wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
And perhaps would have never known their uncle, who died nearly 80 years ago, is one of Kearny’s greatest-ever heroes.
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Kevin A. Canessa Jr. is the editor of and broadcaster at The Observer, an organization he has served since 2006. He is responsible for the editorial content of the newspaper and website, the production of the e-Newspaper, writing several stories per week (including the weekly editorial), conducting live broadcasts on social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and X, including a weekly recap of the news — and much more behind the scenes. Between 2006 and 2008, he introduced the newspaper to its first-ever blog — which included podcasts, audio and video. Originally from Jersey City, Kevin lived in Kearny until 2004, lived in Port St. Lucie. Florida, for four years until February 2016 and in March of that year, he moved back to Kearny to return to The Observer full time. Click Here to send Kevin an email.