August 30, 2022
Happy Birthday to my father (August 30, 1934 - February 14, 1997). I still sorely and immensely miss him. This is a photo of my dad and myself in December 1974 at the house of my great-aunt Rose in East Orange, New Jersey. I was 13 years old.
My dad died on his mother's birthday -- she passed away on May 22, 1977 -- and the day after the birthday of his sister, with whom I recently spoke on the telephone.
Dad was cremated. Half of his ashes were interred at Breslau Cemetery in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. The other half of his ashes were scattered into the North Atlantic Ocean from a U.S. Navy ship. Dad served 22 years in the Navy and retired at the rank of Commander. He was a few months short of becoming a Captain.
He served on a ship in the 1950s, transporting DPs (displaced persons or, as he called them, delayed pilgrims) after World War II from Bremerhaven, Germany, to New York City.
My father had a twin brother named Wilbur who died in 1935 at the age of 9 months due to spinal meningitis. Wilbur is also buried in Breslau Cemetery next to my grandmother and also my grandfather who passed in 1983.
Breslau, which is the original name of Lindenhurst, is also the name of a town in Germany.
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