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Sixty-four years ago today, from somewhere in Allied-occupied France, Mother's wartime husband, 1st Lt. Lawrence Fitzpatrick, U.S. Army, sent this hand-drawn Christmas card V-Mail home to his new wife. Soon would come Bastogne, then sudden death in Alsace, but in early December 1944, Larry Mike had not yet encountered the horrors of war. This ( Read more... )

The internet can be truly wonderful sometimes. For the past month or so, I have been corresponding with Michael Gerner, who posted this followup comment to my original entry about Lt. Larry Fitzpatrick - my mother's second husband who was killed in Alsace, France, in the early hours of February 16, 1945. It turns out that Lt. Fitzpatrick and Mr. ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago, I got a really nice period art deco picture frame for an old portrait of Mother. Well, while I was at it, I decided to get frames for another couple of photos I've been meaning to add to my family shrine, too.

So I've added two new photos - one of my Nana (long overdue), and an exceptionally nice portrait I recently found of ( Read more... )

These obscure photos were always unlabeled in the family album, but I'm certain they were taken by Larry Fitzpatrick before he and my mother were married. (Compare with the photo he took at Bastogne in this post - that print is the same size and image quality as these pics.)

Anyway, as I've said before, it's rare to find a photo of Mother that ( Read more... )

The subject: my mother getting into her Chevrolet, Los Angeles, 1944...


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To my utter amazement, I have just discovered that the circumstances of the death of my mother's late husband - Larry Fitzpatrick - were dramatized in the HBO mini-series Band Of Brothers (2001), specifically in Episode 8: "The Last Patrol ( Read more... )

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