My cousin Les passed away on Memorial Day. He was a career military man with a silver star, two bronze stars and five purple hearts. He was older than me and I remember seeing him only once when I was a kid. He was back home from duty in Germany and visiting at my grandmother’s house. Later he went to Viet Nam. It wasn’t until he was retired and back in the hometown that I knew him at all.

Les was also one of my mother’s students during the short time that she taught school. He was the one who told me the story of my father’s homecoming that I wrote about a few months back.