Forty Years with the Right Woman

Carol told me something every world leader should be required to hear.

While her family lived in Langdon, Carols parents owned a Fairway grocery store. Adjacent to the Roehrich grocery was a business owned by the Boyd family, the Golden Rule Department Store. During World War II, in 1943, the Boyds son Jimmy was killed. Jimmy Boyd was a Navy pilot, fl ying off a carrier. Hearing this news, Carols parents visited with the Boyd family, offering condolence. They took Carol and her little brother Ronnie with them. Carol was nine years old. Ronnie was almost two. Carol remembered holding Ronnie by his hand, silently knowing she was in the presence of adults in deep sorrow. She said to me, None of us could have imagined, on that day, that the same fate awaited this little boy.

I hear Peter, Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? I ask, having lived with her pain, When will they ever learn?

From Forty years with The Right Woman