A Finfam cousin’s son (my 1st cousin once removed) shared this pic of my old coot waaaay back in the day on Facebook. The pic is in my archives (somewhere) but I can’t find it so I stole it off of his Facebook feed. GOTTA GET TO my massive mess of photo archives in an organized way…

So he identified my dad as a true American WWII hero and I guess he’s right, although this pic is actually a posed pic from when my dad was in high school, not from WWII. His own granddaddy (my dad’s older brother) also served in WWII. My dad never saw action. He served by learning to fly and teaching others to fly out in our country’s southwest. At the end of the war, he had orders to report to the South Pacific but then we dropped a bomb or two and he didn’t have to go.

My dad (and his brother) were in college when that war started. Their dad served on the Chippewa County draft board at the time. He had such a hard time sending other people’s kids off to war that he told his boys to arrange their affairs and enlist. And they did. My dad’s older brother was in med school and served on a destroyer.

When the war ended, my dad never really returned to college, even though all of his Army Air Corps pilot school ratings were EXCELLENT. I’m not sure exactly why this happened and it’s too long a story for today.

He took The Commander from her Detroit area home and family to Sault Ste. Siberia and did factory work (tannery) for a while. Around the time I was on the way, his dad (a bank president in town) hired him to work at the bank. My dad took (and aced) banking classes somewhere in Wisconsin and turned out to be as good a banker as HIS dad (who I don’t even think finished high school) and eventually became the bank president in his own time.

Successful failure. My dad was really smart and capable and he could’ve done whatever the heck he wanted to do in life. But he settled for a slightly smaller life in a small town. It was okay. The people he knew there GREATLY respected him for his honesty in the banking business.

We were never what you might call rich but we never wanted for anything we needed. Our house was modest but my parents were also able to manage to afford a modest seasonal cabin on our nearby family beach property. I am following in their footprints. My life is not fancy in any way shape or form but it is a good, comfortable life that we are easily able to pay for. And we still have that seasonal cabin up there on the moominbeach.

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