David,
I so enjoy your perspectives, your ability to share your experiences in a manner that is relatable and straightforward.
Your post brought to mind this from my life. I hope you don't mind:
How do you tell the story of the Lee family, legal immigrates from Korea?
Father, imprisoned by the Japanese during WWII, working in a mine when he heard about the first and second bombs that shook the world. He knew he was going to live, be free. He was right.
Mother with two boys and a girl...Mr. Lee leaves them behind in Korea and legally immigrates to the US. He does not return for the family for ten years...he visits, then comes back to the Bronx.
He saves and buys a gas station. The family now joins him. Yong and his brother are both Black Belts in some Korean martial art, Yong, more on him in a second, is Sixth Degree in a?? kicking.
All the Lee children go to SUNY, the daughter get her PhD, the two boys undergraduate degrees and both get commissions in the Armed Forces. Yong becomes a Marine 53D/E pilot and is brother a Navy E-2 pilot.
Imagine for a moment, from a mine in Japan during the war to this level of success and integration in America.
I met Yong when I got orders to the Sikorsky Factory in Bridgeport. Yong had left the Marines and was now a pilot at the factory. I was commuting back and forth from Maryland during the weekends and I rented a room from Yong for $75 a week. This was in 1993 through 1996.
His house was two miles south of the factory and we lived together almost three years, laughing and giggling...until he died in a crash at the factory:
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-1996-05-11-9605110297-story.html
I led the accident investigation and we figured it all out.
The hard part was I was at a school event in a Blackhawk, like this one:
Happy day. Great kids, they loved it. We always brought the right fire folks with us and the LT. came over and said we have had an accident at the the factory.
We jump in, start the Blackhawk and jam. I land at the front VIP pad because the rear flight field is a mess of MH-53E. I run through the production hangers to get to the accident. The fire guys won't let me go out to the wreckage: "You do not need to see this, LCDR Morgan." The bodies were still on the ground. I am glad I did not.
In my office, making sure all the procedures for crash and moralities were being followed (they were) the Chief of Sikorsky flight test comes in and says: "Would you please call his parents for us? Let them know right now?"
So I did. Who better, right? It remains, both calls, first to his Father who was at work, and then to his Mother, who was at home, the hardest non-combat related thing I have ever done.
I have written this here before, but Yong's Father was wailing in ways that haunt me to this day. I had met him, his family and had gone to dinner at his house in Staten Island. Mr. Lee was a man...now, because I had to, a broken man.
So I get it, David. I hope you understand why I wrote this.