Member-only story
My Family Story — Lives well Lived
The papers are yellowed and tattered from years of neglect in the top of my grandmother’s closet, but they tell a story of a family man from the Great Depression through the space race of the 1960s. The words in the letters and postcards narrate the story of Margaret and Richard Cromlish, my paternal grandparents who were married on a Wednesday in late November 1939 at her parent’s home. For a little over two years, there was wedded bliss in the home of her parents in Belmont, but that would be shattered on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, when the nation was plunged into war.
With duty and honor calling him to serve he sent a telegram on May 4, 1942, to his parents at 819 East End Avenue, Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania announcing that he had enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps Physical Education Department on the previous Saturday. It seemed like a gleeful announcement and like just about everything else, he did not consult his parents before jumping off some ledge of life. From the time he hitchhiked to Virginia and tried out for the Augusta Military Academy where on his own he earned a basketball scholarship. Writing to his Mother on the back of the school’s academic catalog, he stated matter of factly that…
