Lombardoni, John

Matthew Hyman

Mahwah, NJ

Private

2008

2009

John Lombardoni served as a private in the United States Army in the Iraq War. He summarized the transforming experience of boot camp as follows: “They take you out of the element and begin to break you down in order to rebuild you physically and mentally as an infantryman.”

He was deployed to Fort Drum, NY with the 10th Mountain Division where he worked with mortars in Unit C, Co. 2/87. He trained at Army Infantry School in Fort Benning, GA in February of 1991.  He later transferred to the NJ National Guard and was part of a mechanized unit of armored personnel carriers. He was involved in active combat in Basra, Iraq during 2008 and 2009, and was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for detainee operations one year.

He noted that his best memory was helping the communities that were hurt by hurricanes Andrew, Katrina, Floyd, Irene, and Sandy.

John Lombardoni was born February 1969 and he had lived in Mahwah for 32 years. He attended Bergen Tech High School and trained to be an auto technician, but decided to enlist in the military. He thought that serving in the military would be exciting, and planned to use G.I. Bill to make college costs affordable.

John Lombardoni married Cheryl Ann Berardi in 2010.

Lauren Paolillo, ed. Mahwah Military Memories (2017).

John Joseph Lombardoni, in the New Jersey, U.S., Marriage Index, 1901-2016