June 25, 2020
Volume 50 - No. 26
FICTION by Thomas Calabese
Mike Cooper spent his childhood at Camp Lejeune where his father served as a first sergeant in the Marine Corps. When orders came in for Pendleton, the family packed up and headed to the West Coast.
His mother, Carol obtained employment as a librarian assistant when they got to California. Mike had just turned fourteen and enrolled at El Camino High School. One year later Mike’s father was killed in a training accident at Twenty-nine Palms The Paper - 760.747.7119
website:www.thecommunitypaper.com
email: thepaper@cox.net
Marine Corps training center. It was difficult for Mike, but it was especially devastating to his mother who wasn’t an emotionally strong woman. In fact she never recovered from the lost of her husband and eventually turned to prescription drugs to help deal with her depression. Mike was two months away from graduation when he awakened one morning and found his mother dead from a drug overdose, accidental or intentional, it was never determined. Mike stayed with a family of one of
his baseball teammates until he graduated then enlisted in the Marine Corps. He had been in five years and at one time thought about making a career out the Corps like his father, but came to realize that the military life was not the future he envisioned for himself.
A church in Vista, California in cooperation with the USO participated in a program where individuals or families could communicate with members of the military serving in combat zones. Mike figured that he had nothing to lose when he picked a
Lebo See Page 2
family’s name off a list posted on his unit’s bulletin board and sent them a letter. It had nothing personal in it just basically who he was and what he did in the Marine Corps. Mike began to share more about himself with the Regan family as time passed. He was embarrassed to admit to how much he looked forward to mail call. Sometimes he would take their correspondence to a secluded place because he didn’t want his fellow Marines to see him get emotional.