Sammy cafeteria theater, we were still killing Hitler a dozen times a week in our propaganda shows, but it didn’t seem to be slowing him down any.
Don’t worry, everyone said—it’ll all be sewn up by the end of February.
In early March, my parents got a letter from my brother on his aircraft carrier somewhere in the South Pacific, saying, “You’ll be hearing talk of surrender soon. I’m sure of it.”
That was the last we ever heard from him.
Angela, I know that you—of all people—know about the USS Franklin. But I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t even know the name of my brother’s ship before we got word that it had been hit by a kamikaze pilot on March 19, 1945, killing Walter and over eight hundred other men. Always the responsible one, Walter had never mentioned the name of the ship in his correspondence, in case his letters fell into enemy hands and state secrets were revealed. I knew only that he was on a large aircraft carrier somewhere in Asia, and that he had promised the war would end soon.
My mother was the one who got the notice of his death. She was riding her horse in a field next to our house when she saw an old black car with one white, non-matching door come speeding up our driveway. It raced right past her, driving far too fast for the gravel road. This was unusual; country people know better than to speed down gravel roads next to grazing horses. But the car was one she recognized. It belonged to Mike Roemer, the telegraph operator at Western Union. My mother stopped what she was doing and watched as both Mike and his wife stepped out of the car and knocked on her door.
The Roemers were not the sort of people with whom my mother socialized. There was no reason they should be knocking on the Morrises’ door except one: a telegram must have come in, and its contents were dire enough that the operator thought he should deliver the news himself—along with his wife, who had presumably come to offer womanly comfort to the grieving family.
My mother saw all of this, and she knew.
I have always wondered if Mother had an impulse in that moment to turn the horse around and ride like hell in the opposite direction—just to run straight away from that horrible news. But my mother wasn’t that sort of person. What she did, instead, was to dismount and walk very slowly toward the house, leading her horse behind her. She told me later that she didn’t think it was prudent for her to be on top of an animal at an emotional moment like this. I can just see her—choosing her steps with care, handling her horse with her typical sense of conscientiousness. She knew exactly what was waiting for her on the doorstep, and she was in no hurry to meet it. Until that telegram was handed over, her son was still alive.
The Roemers could wait for her. And they did.
By the time my mother reached the doorstep of our house, Mrs. Roemer—tears streaming down her face—had her arms open for an embrace.
Which my mother, needless to say, refused.
My parents didn’t even have a funeral for Walter.
First of all, there was no body to be buried. The telegram notified us that Lieutenant Walter Morris had been buried at sea with full military honors. The telegram also requested that we not divulge the name of Walter’s ship or his station to our friends and family, so as not to accidentally “give aid to the enemy”—as though our neighbors in Clinton, New York, were saboteurs and spies.
My mother didn’t want a funeral service without a body. She found it too grisly. And my father was too shattered by rage and sorrow to face his community in a state of mourning. He had railed so bitterly against America’s involvement in this war, and had fought against Walter’s enlistment, too. Now he refused to have a ceremony to honor the fact that the government had stolen from him his greatest treasure.
I went home and spent a week with them. I did what I could for my parents, but they barely spoke to me. I asked if they wanted me to stay with them in Clinton—and I would have, too—but they looked at me as though I were a stranger. What possible use could I be to them, if I stayed in Clinton? If anything, I got the