One chapter of The Immigrant and the Outlaw includes four Memorial Day stories. For a family who lost three sons and brothers during WWII, that day of remembrance was a compelling part of my growing up years.
“Memories of Old-Fashioned ‘Decoration Day’ Rituals” includes Leora Goff Wilson’s memories of being included in a city-wide commemoration in Guthrie Center in 1900, when she was nine years old. Also a similar ceremony her daughter Doris’s was part of, about the same age, during the 1930s in Dexter, Iowa.
Then my memories begin. “As a young girl, I too was part of a Memorial Day ritual—not as dramatic and memorable, but more personal and poignant for family members.
“Every year, my sister and I went with Mom, Aunt Darlene, and Grandma to decorate the Wilson stones in Violet Hill Cemetery with home-grown bouquets. Only Junior Wilson, age twenty, is buried there. One stone commemorates Dale, age twenty-two when lost, and Danny, age twenty-one. Danny Wilson is buried in France.”
The poignant stories in Chapter 10 were first published in The Des Moines Register, the American Legion’s Legiontown USA, and/or aired over Our American Stories.
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Memorial Day, or as Grandma still called it, Decoration Day, was proclaimed as a day to remember our war casualties. Leora’s Letters is the story of the Wilson family who lost three of their five sons who served in WWII. What Leora Never Knew is my quest to learn what happened to the three who never came home. I was amazed at the compelling details that my grandparents never learned.
Dale Wilson, Danny Wilson, Junior Wilson
“We must never forget these three brothers.” – Marcus Brotherton, New York Times best selling author