Back to blogging

It is raining! I will take the rain, after months seeing no real precipitation, as motivation to renew this blog that has become stagnate while I worked on finishing the novel. The first and part of the 2nd draft are finished, and I am in the process of major revisions. Rereading some sections, I often think, Was I asleep while writing this? It is awful! This is humbling work, always reminding myself that I taught students for years that the first couple of drafts are frame work--getting ideas down. Revising is where the artistic pen goes to work, and the scenes and emotions shine. I have an enormous amount of work to do. Hopefully inspiration will fall with each drop of moisture.

    The joy of this rain must be a little of the ecstasy felt by troops at the end of WW II—especially those who were in POW camps wondering what the Germans or Japanese would do with them in retaliation for defeat. In this year of the 70^th anniversary of the beginning of WW II, it is important that we remember these heroes of years ago. The sacrifices they made are so often forgotten. It is so easy to look at these now very elderly men and women and forget they have tremendously interesting stories of bravery and adventures  to tell--worthy of novels and movies. If you know an elderly person, take time to visit with them about their lives during the War.  If never a part of the military, the folks on the Home Front also have memories of sacrifice, privations, and changes in the culture of the period.

Comments are welcomed! Click below.

Honoring unsung heroes and heroines

Hi All,
Ever since I read Tom Brokaw's wonderful book  The Greatest Generation which details the sacrifices of military men (mostly), I have felt that a book needed to be written about the people on the homefront and what they did to keep the war machine moving. I know some books have been published, but none had the stories that my parents told--some funny, some poignant. What began as a short story about Mom and her nursing school buddies, and a few stories about Dad is now over 100 pages and still growing.
      This is because I  have become good friends with Aggie, one of Mom's best friends during nursing school. This wonderful, feisty woman, who turned 90 in May, joined the Army-Air Force after graduating from nursing school and served as a flight nurse in the Pacific. Her humility makes it difficult to discover many stories through her, even though she is as "sharp as a tack." Therefore,  I have done quite a lot of research with the help of Air Force archivists and learned so much about the heroic actions of WW II flight nurses. Unfortunately, there is little written for the common citizen about the action of  WW II flight nurses, and their experiences are just beginning to be honored.  Anyway, what began as a short story for family to honor my parents has become a much bigger project, and will include other people of the WW II  era and their stories.
  For her birthday last month, I gave Aggie a copy of what I have written thus far, and she was delighted and said, "I almost wet my pants remembering antics we pulled as student nurses.  
   If you are interested in WW II and especially know anything about flight nurses during WW II, I would love your input. If you have homefront stories about people who deserve to be honored, this is a great place to begin to honor them.
Hope we make lots of friends who are also interested in the era of "the greatest generation."