Your parents, did you ever really know them? And why wouldn’t they talk about their past? You heard bits and pieces of their stories as they told others that you were not suppose to have heard as you listened from around the corner. Those were the years of the mid 1900s, the years of growing up that you were to be seen and not heard. Don’t ask questions you were constantly told. The stories told were for adult conversation only thus you steal a listen. You had some pieces of the puzzle but not the whole picture. And when you asked your parents about the past, the most common response from dad was go pedal your papers. In other words, get lost.

Your parents die. You now have access to their personal belongings and memories which include hidden documents that were off limits to us kids in hidden boxes and lock cedar chests. Your dad’s war-time cedar chest is now unlocked, his life revealed. That old cedar chest becomes a treasure trove of information and war time souvenirs. The man you called dad had been a mystery until now. And so was your mother with her soap opera past. No wonder they didn’t talk and share who they were, how tragic, how wonderful, how confusing.

Relive the day to day events of a sailor during World War II from the time he graduated high school in 1939 to after the war in 1946. The documentation dad kept was spot on as I compared his events and dates to what I found in the history books. Relive WWII through dad’s letters home.

And before that, my 5th great grandfather, Baldwin (1752) along side his brother Issac (1752) fought in the Revolutionary War under their brother Captain James Parsons. And Issac's grandson, he fought in the Civil War. Unfortunately, no letters home.