PPCSinc Blogs

I can remember parties with my dad’s side of the family as a kid in the seventies and early eighties.  As the youngest of his litter, my dad missed out on World War II.

His brothers did not.

Parties on my dad’s side followed what became a predictable routine.  The women would prepare the meal while the men sat and smoked and imbibed various products from Anheuser-Busch.

At some point during the party, which inevitably would last into the late hours, the topic of the war would come up. 

And there I would sit…spellbound, listening to their stories and occcasionally interrupting to ask a question. I learned early on about the attack on Pearl harbour, our response at Midway, MacArthur’s long promised return to the Phillipines and my uncles’ involvement to make that dream a reality at Laihi, Rommel outfoxing the British in North Africa, the Allies landing at Normandy, the bombing of London, the battle for Anzio and, of course, the Sullivan Brothers.  In fact, I still hear the anger in my uncle Bill’s voice as he retold the story of the latter.

I can still see them all…laughing and carrying on.  Everyone happy to be together, reminiscing about old friends while Bacchus smiled on.

I remember having the thought as I grew older that I should write their stories down.  I feared they’d be lost forever. But I never did.  “The road to hell…” and all that I suppose. Slowly, but with all of the certainty that time has in its store, my uncles passed away one by one.

By 1999 my dad’s last surviving brother died. To date, I have interviewed several WWII vets, their wives and others who lived during that time.

In some cases, I’ve approached perfect strangers and inquired about their age and involvement in the war.  Most are quite happy to share their story.  In fact, their families are often thankful for the effort.

“I had no idea my dad lived through so much” is a response I hear or “She never talked about the war until this interview.”

Stories are essential to life’s experience.  Mosaics, tapestries, whatever image you prefer to use to describe them, stories surround us on all sides.  They entertain, educate, celebrate and sometimes call us to action.

Working at PPCS allows our staff an opportunity to capture stories that might otherwise have been lost.

They are stories of those who are homeless and often invisible to the community. 

Like all of us, these are folks who have been wounded in one way or another.  Their stories are of genuine heroic effort, accomplishments, set backs, honesty, dishonesty, addiction, illness, redemption, unimaginable rejection and hope.

So who knows?

Maybe by sharing some of their stories, PPCS can snare some unsuspecting bystanders who just might take an interest in the issue, come to appreciate its complexities and get involved.

Once thing is for certain, their stories deserve our attention.