My great-uncle Eddie Cassidy—my maternal grandmother’s brother—died Sunday night at the age of 93. The Andover (NH) Beacon recently featured a profile of his service in WWII, the first of a two-part series. (The second is still to come.) The author is the grandson of Uncle Eddie’s lifelong buddy, Don Teschek. Don’t miss the photo of the two strapping lads standing on a Philippine beach, their high-waisted pants all that’s necessary to peg it as a photo from the 1940s.
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My uncle Walter (who has also passed) was a young Navy Lieutenant aboard a destroyer assigned to Nagasaki in the aftermath of The Bomb. This story of your great-uncle parallels Walter’s story. As a boy, I remember looking at his pictures of Nagasaki(he was an avid photographer) and noting the stark lunar desolation and ash gray colors. No one had ever told me that he had been there, this now famous location. An otherwise empathetic and light-hearted uncle, he stiffened and remarked, “it was the ONLY way to end the war”. There was absolute dispassionate certainty in his voice. I always wondered what events had shaped that certainty, but knew better than to ask. Wish I had.
Funny, Bubby, my grandfather was among the first Americans in Nagasaki afterwards. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a proud man more immediately broken by a subject than that one. I want to know more, but I can’t bring myself to raise it again.
Hi Waldo, sorry for the loss of your great-uncle. I’ve known Ed a long time and he was a great man.
Thanks for the link, it was my pleasure to write the article and to tell their story.