Monday, November 3, 2008

On Nov. 10 1944 my father, Ed Leo, known as “Bud” to the family, serving in the US Army, wrote this in a letter to his Aunt Kate, referring to the recent presidential election:

I was glad to hear Franklin got in again, so were the rest of the Joes.

A little over a month later he lost his leg to a German mortar shell. My dad worked as a tool grinder for many years, and he was a lifelong Democrat. His wife, my mother, Mary Dolores, known as “Dolly”, will be voting straight Democratic tomorrow, and so will I.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Dan, That's a nice remembrance. So I guess they had Joes back then, too.

Anonymous said...

Very nice. I'm sorry I accused you of never talking about your dad.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Bud.

Jennifer said...

I hope our election news is as good.

Dan Leo said...

Thanks for the comments, guys. My mom is very happy now, and I think my dad would be too.

Anonymous said...

Great tribute, Dan.
What a night; what a day!

Dan Leo said...

A good night and a good day, Manny. I don't look on Barack as any sort of messiah, but to me this election was a triumph over fear and hatred and ignorance.

A good day.

Unknown said...

Same here. And a lot of hatred and ignorance to overcome! I thank the young generation...they're rising up and sweeping out the old.
(unfortunately that may include us)

Anonymous said...

The youth group in this election are the children of people that grew up in a similar political climate in the 1960's. Payback time.

Dan Leo said...

Y'know, speaking only for myself, I don't care about payback, and something tells me that GW and Cheney and Rove will all live to fat, happy, wealthy, and unregretful old age. What I do want is to have a country that doesn't torture, that doesn't lock people away without trial, a country that takes care of its own people and does so without fucking over the rest of the world.

Anonymous said...

I hope they die in jail where they belong. They murdered many innocent men, women and children.

Dan Leo said...

We can hope, Anon. The American judicial system will very occasionally punish one of the ruling class for a bit of financial skullduggery, but usually mass murder carries an automatic Get Out of Jail Free card.