It was December 1947, just days before New Year’s Eve. Twenty-one-year-old Anthony "Tony" Gillistro had just come home from the Marine Corps and was paying his childhood friend, William Manocchio, a visit on Standish Street in their old neighborhood in Wethersfield, Connecticut. "The guys were getting together for a New Year’s Eve party. We all just came home. That was, I think, ’47. And I didn’t have a date," Gillistro said.