Memorial Day is for remembering, but I had no memories of my Uncle Al. He had died in World War II, two decades before I was even born. All I knew of him was summed up on his gravestone in a military cemetery in Long Island.
I didn’t even know what he looked like. My dad hardly talked about his older brother. Then, about a year ago, I came upon a photo of Al in uniform, looking like the proverbial GI Joe. I started to wonder about his life, his sacrifice, and the impact of his death on my family.
Through this photo, I found a pathway into my father’s side of the family. There was a lot of pain there. My father’s mother died months after giving birth to him. His father, already raising Al and two other children, and having little money, placed my father in an orphanage in Brooklyn. And that’s where he grew up. He didn’t talk much about all that.
I must have been in my thirties when I finally realized that my dad had been abandoned.
Still, he always talked about his brother Al with affection.
Al died on a military training flight in Nebraska. The guys who died in training – and there were thousands of them – were among the most overlooked sacrifices of the war.
I spent the better part of a year researching Al’s death and life. In the end I found out a lot about him and my dad. And I came away with greater appreciation of family.
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