The week my father turned 81, my husband John and I
went back to Madison, Wisconsin to help Dad get acquainted with the
wonders of E-mail. We had sent him an old computer of Cody’s, our son,
in October of the previous year, but it was driving all of us crazy
trying to give instructions by mail or over the phone and it was
obvious some help was needed. So John, the saint that he is, offered
to spend a week in Wisconsin in January and be the designated teacher.
I was to be the instruction manual author and support crew.
It went so well!! John was so patient. Dad was such
a willing learner. They joked and laughed the whole week. John
brandished a yardstick. Dad started calling him Knuckles and by the
time we left, Dad was at least an "intermediate". (No longer a "never
ever".)
Using our visit to him as an excuse for a party,
Dad hosted 40 or 50 friends and relatives the night before his 81st
birthday (his birthday is January 28) at the Elks Club. When we got
home, John went to bed and Dad and I started talking. He had his box
of WWII mementos out and had been showing them to someone else for
some reason and decided that night to show them to me as well. (He had
never done this before.) The names and places were compelling and
caught my imagination. Kweilin, Karachi, Kunming. Argast, Boucher,
Carbone. The fragile souvenirs had been lovingly saved for all these
years. There are letters and drawings and receipts and menus and movie
tickets and orders and, of course, the pictures. Long into the night,
I couldn’t help myself from yawning. Dad caught my eye and said
something like, oh this is boring you. No amount of explanation seemed
to help. We had to leave the day after next and when I got home, I
tried to write up what he had told me about what has come to be called
"The Story". It was maybe 2/3 of a page long. That started it. I had
gotten a lot of the details wrong and Dad had never finished telling
me everything, so gradually, one E-mail message at a time, this story
has grown. I have used Dad’s phrasing everywhere. It is wholly his
story, in his words. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we have
enjoyed putting it together.
