"Larry Mike"
This West Point cadet was a member of my family, but he's one I never met nor ever could have met, because, had he not died in World War II, my mother and my father never would have married, and I would not be here today.
He was Lawrence Michael Fitzpatrick, 1st Lieutenant, Company G, 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, United States Army; a graduate of the United States Military Academy (West Point), Class of 1943, June. Lt. Fitzpatrick was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star for bravery at Bastogne, and was killed while on patrol on the bank of the Moder River near Haguenau, France, on 16 February 1945.
To my mother, however, he was simply "Larry Mike" - her fallen hero, and the husband with whom she never had the chance to share her life.
Mom, like Dad, did not dwell upon nor speak freely of past tragedies. I don't recall ever being told how or where Lillian Naso and Larry Fitzpatrick met, and I don't have a single photograph of them together. All I really know about Larry Mike was that he was from Butte, Montana, he liked to write humorous poetry, that he and Mother were married the evening before he shipped out overseas, and that they never got to consummate their marriage. Although Mother never said so explicitly, it always seemed to me that that last fact was her deepest regret about losing her soldier husband.
Mother kept many mementos of Larry Mike: his West Point class ring and yearbooks, his Bronze Star, Purple Heart and other insigniae, his silver 101st Airborne drinking cup, the coins and stamps he collected during his time in France, and the letters he sent back to his sweetheart in Los Angeles.
"Fitz," as his men called him, took this picture himself, which was captioned with a single word: "Bastogne."
This account written by Fitz's Company commander clearly conveys the fact that Mother was not the only one who loved this man.
Lawrence Fitzpatick was in no sense a "paper hero." He genuinely earned his decorations, and the adoration of his fellow soldiers.
Although I still have these few items and Larry Mike's coins and stamps, soon after Mother died in 1990, I returned the rest of his personal effects to his sister in Montana. She was very grateful to receive them, as you might imagine.
Every year, Mother would have flowers placed in absentia on Larry Mike's grave in the American Cemetery and Memorial at Epinal, France. In May 1980, she finally got to visit the site. Although it was a sad pilgrimage, I was happy for Mom that she at last got to pay her lost husband her proper respects in person.
There's a tinge of irony to me in all this. You see, if Larry Mike had lived, there was a very good chance that Mrs. Lillian Fitzpatrick and Mr. Edward Shannon could still have met each other in 1949, after all. Only difference being, Lillian would have been nothing more than a pretty secretary that Ed could have flirted with during office visits to her boss at Utter-McKinley Mortuary in Hollywood. If Mr. Shannon was in search of a wife, though, he would have had to look elsewhere. Mrs. Fitzpatrick would have been 100% unavailable and uninterested. Both of their destinies - and mine - hinged on a single sniper's trigger pull in one instant in time years before and half-a-world away. Truly, fate can be both terrible and wonderful, depending upon which side of it one stands.