War
The only time my father talked about the War was when he was dying and Bud Pope came to visit in the hospital. “Remember the time I nearly killed the cook,” my father said somewhat weakly, “he wouldn’t give me enough food. And the Captain came over, Jack, Jack put down the gun, the only time he called me Jack.” Bud Pope, who I knew only from my grandmother’s picture of him with my dad in their World War II Army uniforms on her dresser, nodded with a smile. The conversation faded to silence since the cancer transformed my tall, Jack Kennedy handsome father to an emaciated Holocaust victim. Of course I knew that he spent years in Europe fighting the Germans and was an active member of McFadden Bros.... Read more...
