"My dad talked about people giving their lives, but he didn't want to die. His letters were full of his wanting to come home... But in the end, I think because he did get killed and did die, the brunt of the sacrifice was on my mother and to some extent me, but mostly on her. She knew him. She loved him. He was her husband, and she was left to face that grief alone for the rest of her life. The prevailing thought then was if you have a tragedy in your family, it's stiff upper lip, you just keep going. In my mom's case, she was the only member of her crowd, her group of friends in the town we lived in, whose husband didn't come home. So, she had to watch all those husbands come home to their wives and families and go on to have fulfilling and prosperous lives in the 50s. She had to get up and get dressed and go to work every morning at a time when it wasn't cool for women to work... she got more education so she could get a better job so she could support herself and me. She did a...