Day 6 of Day Visit to Dad - The Old Major

I asked Dad if I could take his photo and he agreed when I showed it to him he said it looked like he thought it would old. I said that it was the same handsome man (privately I would add vulnerable) who was so darned good-looking in his uniform in a photo he had taken on 5th Avenue Manhattan for his mother before he headed west to marry my mother just after he returned to New York. Dad was in North Africa and Italy for all the years of WWII as a major leading a tank battalion. All of us with parents of the WWII generation have often listened to their stories, or at least parts of them. At this time in Dad?s life the war seems to dominate his memories!

My parents met in Italy - my Mom went over with the Red Cross just after Pearl Harbor was bombed. I have her letters (she wrote weekly to her mother) and the description of meeting my Dad is priceless. The first one said she had met another New Yorker, did not think he would be very much fun for her, and in the second one she was in love, head over heels really, and they announced their intentions to marry quickly after that. She spent about 4 more months in Italy finishing up the work of the Red Cross arriving in Seattle in the summer of 1945. They married in November there, and I followed the next fall. Dad is still a charmer! Dad dressed to the nine's everyday so being with him these 6 days and realizing he just has not the energy to get out of his pi's each day is sobering. I head home across the country today, and will treasure these days and the opportunity to take care of a sweet yet still firm man.