Hello, all Sherman cousins! I had to write and tell you that life is a little bit safer for us all now, as there's now another Sherman descendant in the Marine Corps. One of my grandsons, 19 years old, just finished Marine Corps boot camp, and is home on leave for a little while. I did worry about him a little, because although he's about 6'5" or 6'6", he's a beanpole. So I'd worry about him for a whlle until I'd remember that he throws a baseball at 95 mph. He's been clocked many times with that speed or very close to it. He seems really happier than I've seen him for a long time. Not that he was unhappy, but he's talked about joining the Marines since he was a junior in high school. He went to college for a little over a year, to please his parents, but then I think he just decided to start to do what he wanted with his life. When my son called to tell me he'd enlisted, I asked him how he felt about it. He said he was 100% behind him. I asked how Therese, his wife, felt about it and he said, "100 % against it, but she doesn't tell him that". I know that wasn't easy for her, and I can sure understand it, especially in this day and age. I am now officially the daughter of a Marine (my father was in the Army in WWI, and in the Marine Corps in WWII (volunteered both times). I'm also the mother-in-law of a career Marine (27 years), who retired about two years ago, and now the grandmother of a Marine. (And Ed was career Navy!!) Now at least, I can put one of my Marine Corps stickers on the car, and also the neat one I was recently sent by the Navy Retirement folks. I just had to boast a little...I'm really proud of the kid. He'll be 20 in May. (When we moved from the house we'd lived in since Ed retired from the Navy, we came across a small ledger type book in the basement. I'd never seen it before, and I think Ed had forgotten it. He'd apparently started to use it to keep track of promotions of the men under him, and he used from about the middle of the book as a kind of journel. He used a date stamp, and would write, on most days, just what they'd done that day (he was in the Pacific theater on a carrier, the USS Randolph), and listed the damage they'd done (how many planes shot done, etc., and the damage they'd sustained. They were among all the ships that laid down a heavy, heavy barrage on Iwo Jima before the Marines went it. Then, a little later, they were off the island of Ulithi, and early one Sunday morning, they were hit by a Kamikaze. After that, most of what he wrote, was about the damage to the ship, and the repair ship that came and was working with them, etc. I think it was on the 17th day after they were hit, they found a lot more bodies, that had not been reachable until then. He lost a lot of friends on that day they were hit, and a lot of families got visits or telegrams. (I'm so glad that I didn't even know him then...) On the page dated 25 April, 1945, he'd listed all damage on both sides, and then at the very bottom, was written: "Today my 21 birthday." Well, I just had to boast a little about him...please to forgive! Barbara in MO (but originally from NYC)