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So, after posting an update to my personal blog to this blog, I decided to leave the post and just move on. As mentioned in that post, I attended a family reunion where we had a dinner that had 5 generations from Great-Uncle Dick at 86 to a 1 month old angle. I got to go visit Dick and Bev at their apartment and had a wonderful time.

A little back history: My great grandmother Carrie May delivered 8 children, grandma was born in 1905, while her youngest brother Dick was born in 1926 (Surprise!) So, when grandma started having children, (the first being Uncle Lou b. 1925), her mother was still having children. Dick & my mom were both born in the same year, so that meant they were in school together. However, no one ever knew that their relationship was as the school was very large and the did the classes in shifts (September and January starts) Uncle Lou, Dick & Mom did not see each other very often at school, but Dick often was at their house to play while they were growing up.

Bev brought out the family history box that she & Dick have. It was full of many wonderful things that I would love to get my hands on.

Purple Heart and Air Medal belonging to Willard O. Simpson

I did a post about Willard O. Simpson a while ago and saw for the first time his medals that Dick & Bev had in boxes.  On the left is his Purple Heart and on the right an Air Medal with 2 oak leaves. A description of the Air Medal can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Medal
A very interesting read.








More information on the Purple Heart can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart

Back of Purple Heart

Back of Air Medal

I also took a copy of a letter that said his body had been recovered, but that was followed by another letter that said they had identified the wrong person and apologized for the error. Of course, we know from the MARC records of another service man on the Marie Jane that Staff Sargent Willard O. Simpson was killed prior to them getting the bombs into Wilhelmshaven Germany u-boat pens, on the 21st of May, 1943. I can understand now why there was so much mystery around his death and the family didn't know exactly where his plane went down.

I very much enjoyed talking with Dick. He has a great sense of humor however, getting him to talk about his childhood was like pulling teeth.