19 years ago it wasn’t all that happy. Dad passed away on Veteran’s Day, 2000. Did that “just happen” on that particular day ? I’m hard put to believe that it did. Nonetheless, appropriately on that day Lieutenant Clare Tucker passed over the wild blue yonder.

I have since pondered many times, kicking myself for not having asked more questions of him. Yes, I have written about his wartime ventures on the battleship and pored over his war diary, but there was much more that I could have asked.

Thank Heavens, as you were set to sail for the Japanese mainland, that events changed your course… toward home.

Life is then gone, much faster than the war in the Pacific. Faster yet than the kamikaze dive that sank the nearest ship in your formation. Too fast, and now you are gone.

If I could impart one notion to friends here reading, it would be ask away of your folks; of the veterans you know. Record their histories if they are still with us. Record what they did for this country and for us.

Thank you Dad. I salute you.