The Evans family (from left): Paul, William, James, Thomas and John with Mayor Walsh and Ed Forry. Margaret Brett photos

November 1967 was a somber month in American history.

Five hundred thousand American troops were in Vietnam, and Gen. William Westmoreland was insisting that the United States was winning the war in Asia, which Americans would fight for another seven years, then abandon. On Nov. 19, a Sunday, while the Jets and Joe Namath were at Fenway Park, beating the Patriots, 29-24, in Vietnam, in the Central Highlands, the battle for Hill 875 began, a four-day siege with American casualty rates of 60 percent. On the same day, 9,000 miles away, in South Boston, six teenagers agreed to enlist together in the Marine Corps, and soon they were off to South Carolina, to boot camp at Parris Island, and then to Vietnam.

Ed Forry of the Reporter with honoree Margaret Stapleton.

Margaret Stapleton arrived in Boston from County Tipperary in July 1955, then settled with cousins in Scituate. She accepted an entry-level job with the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. and earned BS and MBA degrees by taking evening college classes over more than a decade’s time. She has been a longtime volunteer at Pine Street Inn and plays an active role with Irish organizations including the Eire Society, Charitable Irish, and the Irish Pastoral Centre.

The early years in Ireland
Margaret Stapleton’s parents emigrated to the states in the 1920s. Although they both hailed from County Tipperary, William Stapleton and Mary Anne Lyons first met in New York, married, and settled down there to begin their family. Mary Anne gave birth to a girl and then a boy just as the Great Depression began.