...And some gave all

Helen Schroder sits on the sun porch of the PEO Home in Beatrice, her thoughts drifting back in time.

The memories flow as the silver-haired mother and grandmother, who turns 84 the day after Christmas, talks about her days as a Navy WAVE and the heroism of a son who went to war and never came home.

An only child, son Jack was born in 1947. He died in 1967 while serving with the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, but his legacy lives on in the words he penned.

“He had written a diary of every day over there and on the ship,” his mother said.

Some of those words, and the thoughts of many others, have been preserved in the David Maraniss book, “They Marched into Sunlight - War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967.”