Blog Your Blessings Sunday: the Gift of Memory

Laurence Isbell is a great-uncle I never knew. He was the fourth of six siblings--the first was my Uncle Bud and the second was my Grandmother. Uncle Laurence was a submariner during the Second World War. He was under age when he signed up because he was so troubled by Pearl Harbor he couldn't stand staying home. His going broke my great-grandmother's heart, but she knew there was no stopping her son. I have written about this uncle in my book Silent Spaces . The book includes this devastating letter from the Secretary of the Navy to my great-grandparents . As we approach July 4, I pray all Americans will think of whose we are. YOUR SON, Lawrence Isbell, Ship’s Cook third class, US Naval Reserve, has been carried on the official records of the Navy Department in the status of missing in action as of 5 July 1944. He was serving on board the USS HERRING when that submarine failed to return from patrol operations in the Pacific area. On 21 May 1944 the HERRING took aboard fue