35 cents
FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2014
VOL. 2/ISSUE 13
Remembering war through love letters Patrick McCallister For Veteran voice
patrick.mccallister@yahoo.com
Robert “Bob” Parenti knows a lot about war. He served in the Army’s 8th Armored Division during World War II. He’d seen a lot of war. He also knows a lot about love. “When you’re over there, you’re alone,” he said. “You frequently have the feeling you’re neglected. Here I’m fighting a war. Why? Is she thinking about me?” Turned out that back home Laurie Sullivan was thinking about her sweetheart off in Europe fighting a war. She was thinking about him all the time. They’d
met in 1943 at a USO event, and wrote many letters back and forth. What Parenti didn’t know was that she was saving his letters from the front. The couple married in 1946. Then came life, children, careers. “I just found these letters for the first time a couple years ago,” Parenti said. “She saved them. I didn’t know it until years later. I was going to throw them out, and she said, ‘No. Those are my letters.’” Parenti said that when reading the letters he vividly remembers where and when he wrote them.
See PARENTI page 5
A surprising discovery at the WWII Museum When an Indiana woman went to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans earlier this year, she hoped she might see a display or photos depicting her high school sweetheart, a Marine who was killed in the war. Instead, Laura Mae Davis Burlingame discovered the diary
in which Cpl. Thomas “Cotton” Jones wrote about her, the Associated Press reports. “I didn’t have any idea there was a diary in there,” said the 90-year-old Mooresville, Ind., woman. Before he was killed by a Japanese sniper’s bullet, Jones’ last request was for whoever found the diary to return it to the girl he loved. He died on Sept. 17, 1944,
See DIARY page 4
Photo by Patrick McCallister Bob Parenti looks at letters he wrote to his sweetheart, Laurie, when he was an Army private in World War II. Parenti used the letters to author ‘A Story of Love and War: World War II Recollectons From Letters Written To a Soldier’s Sweetheart’
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Domenick Scarlato FOR VETERAN VOICE