The morning he finally made it to our house, I discovered him, sitting quietly on the wooden slat-chair on our back patio, right outside the kitchen door. I flew out the door, screaming "Allllan Willlllllaaaard! You're back!" He grinned from ear to ear and scooped me up and planted a solid kiss right on my mouth, and said: "Do you think there's a bit of breakfast to be had around here?"

Well, he received a good breakfast, all right, as well as the attentions of his two aged aunts (my grandmother and her sister) and his cousin, my mother, and my brother and me, all of us hovering and over-the-moon happy to see him.

But he had gone off to war with a head full of blonde hair, and he came back mostly bald. His mouth sometimes quivered (he chewed a toothpick, I think to hide it), and he never spoke about his wartime experiences. He lived with us for several years, and for the first few he had to travel up to the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco once a month. He had problems with his liver, which my mother said came from a short time spent in a prison camp in Germany, she thought, although he never spoke to us of it, and we were strictly forbidden to ask him about it.

He was extremely helpful to my mother, taking on all sorts of chores like trimming back the live oak trees that blocked the view from our hill, or re-shingling the roof over the living room, or driving his aunts to church.

He stayed with us for about four years, before he went back to Idaho to teach school. I expect that our multigenerational home and our palpable love for one another went a long way to help in healing him from the experience of World War II.

Allan Willard was a brilliant, fun-loving rascal. I thought then, and think now, that he was one of the best men I have ever known.

©2014 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

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