Dolores Beal Stephens

This book is about a forty-five-year-old man who left his wife of twenty-three years, his four children, and his home to volunteer in the US Army during World War II. It is about Florence, his wife, who not only shouldered the responsibility of their home, paying the bills on a small income, but also worked as a volunteer Red Cross nurses aide for two days a week, a volunteer at the Red Cross headquarters in Carmel, New York, for two days a week, and later as head of the Red Cross Special Services at the Red Cross headquarters. It is also about a family coping with my fathers absence and waiting for his return. It is about his expressions of love in his v-mail and airmail letters for his little son, his teenage daughter, and two adult children. Finally, it is also about the small village of Brewster, fifty two miles north of New York City, where this soldier and patriot, my father, was raised and acquired the values that guided his life.