Every Memorial Day

I’ve posted before about grieving for two military casualties. I was typing today’s stories and deleted my words. Maybe it’s my need for more sleep or my age but thinking about Jerry and Tom seemed sadder today. I kept the stories brief. I am grateful that my Army Air Corps father and Army father-in-law survived WWII and that my husband survived the Viet Nam era.

I was 2-years old when my Uncle Gerald J. Mueller was captured and killed in February of 1951 in a North Korean POW camp while serving in the Army. Jerry was only 21 and married to my mom’s sister, my Aunt Jeannie. They had already suffered the loss of their newborn son. I don’t remember Jerry, but his story came back to life in 2017 when his remains were identified and returned to Minnesota. Jeannie never stopped asking me if I could research any more information on him. https://www.kesslermaguire.com/obituaries/Gerald-Mueller

The other loss was a grade school classmate. Our 8th grade graduating class at St. Therese here in Saint Paul only had 45 students so a loss early on had extra impact. I was living in California in January of 1968 when another classmate sent me a letter telling about Tom Kingston’s death in Viet Nam. Tom was a 20-year-old Marine. Another reason it hit hard was that I was a Navy wife and living just off a military base, not knowing the path forward of my husband’s service. https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/28088/THOMAS-L-KINGSTON/

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