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THE MESA TRIBUNE | JULY 10, 2022
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EV author pens new book on parental death’s impact TRIBUNE NEWS STAFF
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ast Valley freelance author Michelle Shreeve was only 9 when her mother died and even 30 years later, her loss is never far from her mind. In many ways it has shaped her career as a student and a writer. While earning her master’s degrees in English and create e writing, one of her projects focused on how bibliotherapy and writing therapy can help children, teens, and young adults cope with the death of a parent at a young age. She has written numerous articles for local and national publications about the impact of a parent’s death on children and teens and in 2018 published a book, titled “Parental Death: The Ultimate Teen Guide,” that was based on her interviews with 90 people ranging in age from preteen to the mid-80s. It was the 56th book in the “It Hap-
Michelle Shreeve holds up copies of her first book on how losing a parent at a young age can impact people, like her mother’s loss did to her, for decades. (Tribune file photo) pened to Me Ultimate Teen Guide” series published by Rowman & Littlefield and is still available on a variety of book-sale
websites. This month, Shreeve is publishing a sequel to her book that is directed mainly
at teens who have lost a parent and for the surviving parent trying to guide an adolescent child through the trauma of losing a mother or father. “Parental Death: The Ultimate Teen Guide,” which is also published by Rowman & Littlefield, offers a variety of ways in which teens especially can cope with the universal difficulties of losing a parent. She also delves into the unique dynamics of specific losses – sons who lose fathers, daughters who lose mothers, and vice-versa – and how that impacts a teen’s future development. This book also identifies how the challenges of life without a parent can affect a young adult at different stages of life. Shreeve has been writing about parental loss and its impact since 2008 and has talked not only with counselors and ex-
see SHREEVE page 16
Chandler WWII veteran prepares to turn 100 BY PAUL MARYNIAK Tribune Executive Editor
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e is part of a rapidly diminishing breed of men, a member of the Greatest Generation, though when you ask him what thought comes to mind when he looks back on his days as a telegraph operator in the European theater during World War II. Floyd Casey without hesitation says: “The weather.” “The weather was so damn cold,” recalled Floyd, who becomes a centenarian on July 20 and already is the oldest resident at the Sunrise of Chandler assisted living community. “You couldn’t think, every time you went out the door in the wintertime and summertime was so hot you couldn’t breathe.” But Floyd survived not just the weather but every bullet and shell the Germans could fling against his units in major WWII
clashes like the Battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of Central Europe, and the Battle of Rhineland – all designated by the War Department in 1945 as Bronze Service Star campaigns. The youngest of three children who got his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse in the Finger Lakes Region of New York, Floyd was a 20-year-old sales clerk for the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. who had recently married his high school sweetheart at the time he enlisted in the Army in October 1941. He eventually became a Radio Operator 740, eventually winning promotion to Tech Sergeant 4th Class after becoming proficient in both American and Morse Code as well as telegraph and typewriter skills. Those skills were not completely new to him: he had acquired a foundation in
see CENTENARIAN page 16
Larry Casey of Ahwatukee, right, is planning a special celebration at Sunrise at Chandler for his father Floyd when he marks his 100th birthday on July 20. (David Minton/Arizonan
Staff Photographer)