"basilisk" wrote in message
...

My FIL passed away New Years day, another of the Greatest Generation,
that did not know the meaning of "quit" or "couldn't".

This message is timely... I was on the phone last night until about 1:15 AM
comforting a friend whose father John passed away a year ago on 1/4/2013.
John earned two purple hearts... D-Day at Normandy and another that neither
of us know the details of as he NOT ONCE discussed any of it. It was only
after he died that his wife told us about Normandy... He never gave up on
anything right to the end.

During the last conversation I had with him a day or so before he passed he
told me that he wanted me to have his tools, amongst them are also his
father's tools, both in their original wooden tool boxes. Both men were
professional carpenters and I understand that the older tools are
beautifully ornate. I told him I was honored... If all goes well I'll be
picking them up from FL this spring and getting them back to NY where they
started from in the first place. I think that to keep two complete sets of
hand tools together in their original wooden tool boxes is something special
and I'd never break them up.

John's workmanship was impeccable and I've never seen any paint work that
was better... In that last conversation I thanked him for teaching me how to
paint.. This as John helped me paint the house he built for his mother that
I purchased before they all moved to FL around 1979. John was a great guy...
quick of wit as it sounds like William A. Posey was... brothers in arms
though on opposite sides of the globe. Not many of them left...

John