Joe Pallaria

As a boy growing up in Haverhill, Joseph Pallaria ’83 struggled in school. When his parents divorced, he lived with his grandmother and aunt. By age 15, he was on the brink of homelessness. Out of desperation, he joined the Navy in 1974 at 21 years old. 

That decision changed the course of his life. 

Pallaria began his military career as an active-duty U.S. Navy corpsman at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Portsmouth, Virginia, where he cared for military patients and their families in the medical wards and pediatric surgical clinic of the 1,000-bed facility. 

“Taking care of our service members, veterans and their families was magical for me,” says Pallaria. 

After two years on active duty, Pallaria transitioned to the U.S. Navy Reserve, serving as a corpsman providing medical care in the Marine Corps. Over the next eight years, he completed specialized military training and participated in field exercises, including overseas deployments. At the same time, Pallaria was building a new future for himself through education. Guided by advice from an uncle, Pallaria looked for ways to advance his career. 

“I found my purpose in health care,” he says. “I kept hearing my uncle’s voice from my childhood saying to take advantage of every opportunity, because you may not get a second chance.” 

Pallaria moved to Lowell and, using the GI Bill, spent six years attending college. After completing associate degrees in respiratory therapy and business management at Northern Essex Community College, he transferred to UMass Lowell and earned nursing and psychology degrees in 1983. 

Pallaria, who had struggled in school growing up, discovered that he loved to learn. 

“I did pretty well in my classes and was also a writer and photojournalist for the university newspaper and yearbook at UML,” he says. 

But it was in nursing that he found work that was meaningful and fulfilling.

“I needed a career and realized that I loved working with people, and the field of nursing gave me that ticket,” says Pallaria, who later earned an MBA from the University of La Verne in Southern California. 

After graduating from UMass Lowell, he got a job as an intensive care nurse at an 800-bed psychiatric hospital operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Bedford, while continuing to serve in the Navy Reserve. Pallaria’s nursing degree paved his way back to active duty—this time as a commissioned Navy officer. He worked as a psychiatric and medical-surgical nurse at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Philadelphia; it was there that he met his wife, Debbie, also a nurse. The couple later welcomed a daughter and son. 

Pallaria transferred to the U.S. Air Force as a second lieutenant in the Nurse Corps. He rose to the rank of major, excelled as a perioperative nurse and was deployed to England, Japan, Turkey, Norway and Cambodia. He retired from active duty in 2006 and spent the next 15 years caring for veterans at the Spokane VA Medical Center. 

After 32 years in the military, and now retired, Pallaria has found another way to support the profession that changed his life: investing in the next generation of nurses. In 2025, he traveled to UMass Lowell from his home in Spokane to present the Solomont School of Nursing with a $100,000 donation and recently made a second donation. Both gifts support nursing simulation labs, instrumentation and discretionary needs within the school. 

“I’m very appreciative of the UMass Lowell nursing program and the difference this degree has made in my life,” says Pallaria. “I wanted to support the School of Nursing to help all the students who want to become nurses.”