An Unfinished Story

Searching the past, going forward

For as long as I can remember, my family compared me to my Uncle Bill. I was told that I looked like him, sounded like him, and laughed like him — and that my sense of humor was apparently just like his. I wouldn’t know; Uncle Bill died in April of 1945. But I felt like I knew him.

His Purple Heart and folded American flag sit in a cabinet in my home now. I am the keeper of records, since both my parents are gone. Bill was my mother’s only brother, a younger sibling who was killed at age 19, in World War II. He died just after the Battle of the Bulge, in which 19,276 servicemen and women and lost their lives, making it the third most deadly battle in US history, after Normandy and the WWI Battle of Meuse-Argonne.

My grandfather was an amateur photographer, so I have many pictures of Bill. Growing up, I would study them: Was I living the life he was unable to? He was so beloved — am I living up to him, to his memory, to who he was?

Would I sacrifice my life as he did?

A friend of mine wrote a book, called Second Generation, about his father who survived the concentration camps. In it, he…