We received some sad news last week. The mother of one of my best friends died. As a fellow of a certain age (child of the ‘80s), parents passing, unfortunately, is becoming a regular occurrence.
Karen was 82, with brain aneurysms and other health complications. Her doctors had told her she effectively had a ticking time bomb in her head. So, we weren’t necessarily surprised to learn that she had died suddenly, but we were deeply saddened.
It always seems the sun shines a little less brightly when good, kind people check out of Hotel Humanity. Selfishly, it seems the sunshine is even dimmer when we lose a true champion in our lives. And Karen was, for reasons not entirely clear to me, a faithful champion of the Kittle cause.
In recent years, Karen talked a lot about the father she never knew, and how she was looking forward to meeting him in heaven. She was a toddler when her dad, a staff sergeant in the Army’s famed 88th Infantry Division — the Blue Devils — was killed in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II’s Italian campaign.
The Army-typed casualty list is long and breathtaking. Harry O. Wells, from the rolling hills of southwest Wisconsin, was a very young man when he died fighting on a hill in Italy known as Monte Battaglia, or Battle Mountain. His 350th Infantry Regiment was recognized for extraordinary valor.
‘Seven Bloody Days’
Wells, like so many of the young
