Memorial Day, 2015

Dear Diary,

It has been 70 years since dad came home from WWII.  He would have been 96 this year.  Back in 1997 I bought this commemorative plaque for him at the Wright Museum in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. I went over there to photograph it for this collage  It is a fabulous museum dedicated primarily to the impact of the war on the home front.  I gave it to him for his 79th birthday.  He died just 5 months later.

The photograph in the collage above shows my dad, on the right, and one of his comrades at his basic training at Ft. McClellan in Georgia.  (My extra photo today is of his platoon at Ft. McClellan.)  I always smile when I see this image of him without his glasses.  He tried to enlist early on but was rejected due to his bad eyesight.  He was finally drafted in 1944,  I guess his eyesight was no longer a problem.  But he chose to have this photo made without his glasses.

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.” -- John F. Kennedy