Frances; Thanks for the story, I love it. I remember seeing the movie years ago and remember that Walter Brennan was Pastor Piles and that always stuck in my mind. I was very surprised when I found out that Alvin was one of us. The world has really gotten much smaller since I started doing genealogy and It does not surprise me that Alvin was not happy with his movie. I just finished reading the new book on Ernie Pyle's life by James Tobin and much the same went through Ernie's mind when they made his movie, G.I.Joe. Time magazine did a story on him and being he was in Europe at the time, they sent their reporters to hollywood to pick over the script and find facts. It made Ernie very unhapppy when the article came out. Due to the dramatics they put into the movie they made Ernie look like a hick. Thank you for sharing this story, it sounds as if your Mama is doing okay. I have to admire people that go out of their way just to say hello. I was never that way until I married my present wife and she is outgoing and sounds like something she would do. I'm about to share another story with the group about something odd that happened while researching our history. It has to do with Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney. Andy was a tent mate of Ernie Pyle in Africa during the fighting there. When I was researching Ernie, I came across a story concerning the Writing 69th website that was on <www.channel1.com/users/jimham/> and had to do with the Air Force program where they were going to put correspondents on their bombers to report the action. One of the first planes to take a correspondent up was shot down. The story was extraordinary because the man researching it was able to get written reports from three sides of the action. The Luftwaffe Pilot Heinz Knoke wrote the story about his attack on the bomber and shooting it down. One crew member survived by being blown free and parachuted to the ground where he was captured and put in a concentration Camp, His name was Wayne Gotke and he wrote his story. The plane crashed and burned in a farm yard south of Oldenberg Germany and the Luftwaffe pilot followed it to the ground, landed and helped the farmer and his daughter get some of the stock out of their burning barn. The farmer and his daughter, the Eilers wrote their account. Now for the rest of the story, this incident took place within walking distance of my Mother-in-law's home in Germany. She was a young women then and remembers it well. I surprised her with the story this spring and she was shocked. My Brother-in-law still lives at Bad Zwischenahn where this happened. Believe it or not! Ron