Turn the page and see my father at war. Robert served in an army supply unit in the war; he dropped out of high school to join. In 1943, his senior year of high school, he got very ill and was sent to a sanitorium to recover. I don't know what the illness was, but because of this he was not enrolled in school and therefore was in danger of being drafted. To avoid this, which would certainly have put him in the infantry, he joined the army air corps to train as a pilot (he said he chose it because their jackets were so cool). A complex series of SNAFUs placed him in this supply unit instead; he thinks it probably saved his life, as late in the war air corps casualties were extremely high.

I heard the whole story only once. My father never spoke about the war. I can count on one hand the number of times he spoke of it in my presence, and cannot recall the details of any story, because I simply never heard any war story more than once. I know he saw little if any combat, but he did encounter Japanese troups at least once face to face.

This handful of snapshots is the only record I have, either physical or ephemeral, of this period in his life. These pictures are so exactly him-- in every one of them he draws attention to himself through pose or attitude or location in the picture. This is what my father did, although to be fair it was mostly that attention had a way of focusing in on him. He is one of those people you simply must pay attention to.