Spillane Family History & Genealogy

A James David Spillane literary note.

Ohio, U.S., Marriage Record

Name Miss Treva Niel Winter
Marriage Date 4 Apr 1922
Form type Marriage
Age 24
Gender Female
Birth Year abt 1898
Birth Place Akron, Ohio
Father Reuben B
Mother Laura Moine
Spouse
Mr Daniel J Spillane
Spouse Age 29
Spouse Birth Year abt 1893
Spouse Father Nicholas
Spouse Mother Mary Handel

Joseph Spillane speaks during an interview in his home in Mystic, Conn. Oct. 16, 2024. Now 100-years-old, Spillane served in the U.S. Army infantry during World War II.

MYSTIC — Joseph "Niel" Spillane turned 100 in March. But his advanced age doesn't scare him. He still drives, works out at the gym three times a week and meets regularly for coffee with veterans of other wars.

"After you've been shot at every day for three years you don't scare easy," said Spillane as he sat recently in the living room of his Mystic home.

Spillane said he had an opportunity as a young man to apply for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, but as an aspiring architect with an interest in ship-building, he had his heart set on the Webb Institute, considered the best ship-building college in the world at the time. All tuition was paid for accepted students, as well.

"I was happy for eight months," Spillane said of his time at Webb.

Searching for a new plan, Spillane, originally from Westchester County, New York, decided to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1943, where his father was serving state-side and headed to Washington, D.C.

After basic training Spillane was assigned to light machine gun training in Missouri.

"We spent five days a week for three months on the range," he said. "We became experts."

From there it was on to Mississippi and back to New York where his unit was loaded onto the Queen Elizabeth transport ship and headed to Scotland and then England to train with British Commandos, he said.



Next was landing at Utah Beach on D-Day.


"Three or four days in we were in our first firefight and a friend got killed 10 feet from me," Spillane recalled of the massive landing on the German-held French shore.

Spillane's unit would make its way to three port cities along the French coast conducting night searches and other activities. They would have one day off from the June 6, 1944 allied invasion at Normandy to December. When they did get a day off, Spillane, who could speak conversational French because of time spent in the French Club at his high school, went on a visit to a town with a mission to find light bulbs and sockets. He found and secured them, bringing them back to his unit where a fellow soldier fashioned them into strings of lights for their foxholes.




By Christmas, he said, they were at the German border.

Joseph Spillane speaks during an interview in his home in Mystic, Conn. Oct. 16, 2024. Now 100-years-old, Spillane served in the U.S. Army infantry during World War II.
Joseph Spillane speaks during an interview in his home in Mystic, Conn. Oct. 16, 2024. Now 100-years-old, Spillane served in the U.S. Army infantry during World War II.

Ned Gerard/Hearst Connecticut Media
"We had a nice Christmas dinner and a keg of beer," Spillane said, adding that the Battle of the Bulge was being fought in Bastogne at around the same time. Spillane said there was a fear that the Germans would try to "leak out" and advance, and that his unit was assigned to prevent that. In January 1945 Spillane said his unit was dispatched to a fortified town to dislodge the Germans, which they did. But the Germans attacked again with an armored battalion to take the town back.

The Germans were not successful, Spillane said. Of the 35 armored vehicles they sent — including four of their biggest tanks, 22 did not make it through the fight. The Germans also suffered 800 dead or wounded casualties and asked for a truce to remove their men from the battlefield, with a promise that they wouldn't attack again.




Both sides left the town and moved on.

A short time later, Spillane said, his unit was tasked with taking another town and was told that the Germans there were mostly "cooks and bakers," which turned out not to be true.

They had an armored division with "air-burst shells," he said. His lieutenant, who was standing nearby was killed by one.

"He was cut in half."




During that bitter cold winter in which the ground and wet clothes froze solid, Spillane said he and others were about to be sent into another battle when an Army surgeon pulled them off the line.

"He said 'they are frozen and I'm sending them back,'" Spillane remembered.

That led to several hospitalizations for Spillane, who was originally sent to Versaille before being moved to a hospital with a view of the English Channel.

Spillane said he woke up his first morning there and saw a scene of daffodils outside his window.


"I thought I had died," he remembered.

Spillane was released from the hospital the day the war ended in Europe and he eventually made his way back to Germany to become part of the occupation force.

It was there that he and a fellow soldier took a few joy-rides on the German autobahn in a Mercedes Benz convertible that had been left behind in the house they were quartered in. It was also there that Spillane was transferred first to become an MP and then to become paymaster and handle a $45,000 monthly payroll, which came with a promotion to sergeant.

Spillane believed his promotion would be short-lived because he knew nothing about finances and accounting.




"That was my last duty and I thought I was going to be court-martialed for stupidity," he said, adding that the job included paying people in 19 different currencies.

Spillane said he went to a soldier in the group and asked him to find "a good banker" who could help. They found a former manager of one of the largest banks in Bavaria and ended up winning awards for their work.

"Our books were so balanced we got a commendation from Eisenhower," Spillane said.

A conversation with his father, who was working for an Navy admiral in Washington, D.C., brought his journey full circle. His father asked him what he wanted to do. Spillane said he still wanted to go to the Webb Institute and become a ship-builder, but knew that wasn't possible because once a student left before graduating, they weren't allowed to go back.



He didn't know that the admiral his father was working for was about to become president of the Webb Institute.

During a subsequent phone call, Spillane recalled what his father said.

"He said you don't have to do anything by show up on August 21st 1946," Spillane recalled.

Spillane was joined by a large group of returning soldiers to form the oldest freshman class the institute had ever seen. He went on to marry his girlfriend Dorothy, who he met when he came home.They raised three children before Dorothy died in 2011 at the age of 89.

He also went on to become an ensign in the U.S. Navy and worked in ship building in South Carolina and Connecticut.

"She had a good life," said Spillane of his wife, who added that he has too.

Nov 9, 2024

Jamie Spillane (Choral Conductor)

Born: 1959 - Connecticut, USA

The American choral conductor and music pedagogue, Jamie Spillane, attended Robert E Fitch Sr High School in Groton, Connecticut and graduated class of 1977. He obtained his Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the Ithaca College; his Master of Music degree in Music Education from the University of Connecticut; and his D.M.A. in Choral Conducting, Minor in Music Education from the University of Arizona. His conducting mentors include: Dr. Bruce Chamberlain, Dr. Peter Bagley, Dr. Paul Phillips, Professor Lawrence Doebler, and Dr. Robert Page.

Jamie Spillane was at the University of Arizona in Tucson. At the University of Arizona, Spillane was director of the Symphonic Choir, the premier undergraduate choir, the 125 voice University Community Chorus and orchestra, and UAVJE, the university vocal jazz ensemble as well as teaching undergraduate choral conducting. Spillane was also the Chancel Choir Director at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church. For 14 years, he was chairman of the Ledyard High School Music Department in Ledyard, Connecticut where he directed a program that grew to over 400 singers in 12 choirs. These choirs performed throughout America and Europe and at state and division conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and Music Educators National Conference. During Spillane’s tenure, Ledyard High School was twice voted a Grammy Signature School as one of the top 100 high school music programs in the USA.

Jamie Spillane served at Iowa Wesleyan College where he directed three choirs, taught conducting and had a private voice studio. He also directed the Mount Pleasant Chorale, a college and community ensemble that often performed under his direction with the Southeast Iowa Symphony Orchestra. Following that, he was director of Choral and Vocal Activities at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, New York where he directed the RWC Chorale, taught conducting and private voice students as well as conducting RWC Opera Theater’s production of The Marriage of Figaro.

Currently, Jamie Spillane is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies at the University of Connecticut in Willington. He directs the University Choir and Chamber Choir and teaches undergraduate and graduate choral conducting and choral literature. In the summers, he has taught graduate choral conducting and choral literature at the University of Connecticut and Central Connecticut State University and directed a vocal jazz choir for talented high school students at Indiana State University.

The Chorale and the Iowa Wesleyan College Choir recently combined to perform the Iowa premier of Stephen Paulus’ To Be Certain of the Dawn - a Holocaust remembrance oratorio, other literature included: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, W.A. Mozart’s Requiem, Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and J.S. Bach’s Magnificat in D major (BWV 243).

Jamie Spillane is a very active festival conductor, adjudicator, and clinician who enjoys working with choirs of all ages. He has conducted All-State or honor choirs in Connecticut, Colorado, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Indiana, Missouri, Arizona, North Dakota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Iowa and has presented interest sessions at state and divisional conventions. In 2009, Spillane directed All-State Mixed Choir in North Dakota and the All-State Jazz Choir in Iowa and in 2012 he conducted the Colorado All-State Choir.

In 2008, Jamie Spillane was honored by the faculty and students of Iowa Wesleyan College as the Chadwick Teacher of the Year. He is often listed in many Who’s Who publications. He has been very active in ACDA and MENC/NAfME. He is on the NAfME – National Board for Choral Music Education and is a Past President of the Connecticut Chapter of the ACDA as well as the Eastern Division R & S Chair for Vocal Jazz and Show Choir. He was also the chair of the 2011 Iowa Choral Directors Assoc. Summer Symposium and Convention in Mason City, Iowa. Jamie Spillane and his wife Linda are the proud parents of two sons, J.B. & Colin.

1975 yearbook photo from Monsignor Farrell High School of Eugene Spillane.