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LUCY BURDETTE: I "met" today's guest through her blog, Fabulous Florida Writers. Recently, she sent out an email mentioning that her father's WWII story had been included as the lead selection in Homefront Cooking, a collection of stories and recipes honoring American veterans. My father also was a WWII vet, and the experience had a huge impact on him. So I wanted to hear more about this story, and here she is to tell it...
JACKIE MINNITI: The Greatest Generation will soon be no more. Each day, we lose 360 WWII veterans. Approximately 555,000 remain, and the VA projects that in 20 years, those too will be gone. And their stories, a treasure trove of living history, will disappear with them.
My father was a veteran of WWII. As a Baby Boomer, just one generation removed from that war, I thought I knew a lot about it. But it wasn’t until I decided to write a book about a little French girl named Jacqueline that I truly understood the amazing contribution made by our Greatest Generation.
In 1944, four years before my birth, my dad was a handsome soldier with the 127th General Hospital. Shortly after D-Day, his unit arrived in Rennes, France to set up a military hospital. There he met Jacqueline, an inquisitive 10-year-old who took a liking to him. She began following him from the barracks to the hospital and back again. While neither understood the other’s language, they learned to communicate by teaching one another a few words and phrases punctuated with exaggerated gestures. Soon, a beautiful friendship blossomed, and Dad promised her that if he ever had a daughter, he would name her Jacqueline. This was the only war story my father was willing to share. He told it so often, sometimes with misty eyes, that it became a part of our family lore.
After I wrote my first book, Dad began hinting that I write one about Jacqueline. Never having written historical fiction, I realized I needed to find out a lot more about WWII. I plunged into the research, and the more I learned, the more I realized how little I actually knew. But most of all, I was awed by the incredible bravery, selflessness and sacrifice of the American GIs.
Dad passed away six months short of his 100th birthday, and I feel tremendously blessed that he died knowing his story would live on. It’s essential to preserve these stories so future generations will know about the sacrifices made by our military and realize how fortunate they are to live in the Land of the Free. So many people lack even a rudimentary understanding of American history, and what they don’t learn from history, they’re doomed to repeat.
I was recently honored to have my dad's story included as the lead selection in Homefront Cooking, a wonderful collection of stories and recipes that honors the service of American veterans. Part of the proceeds of this book will be donated to the Robert Irvine Foundation, an organization that supports our military personnel and first responders. We owe these disappearing warriors (and all our veterans) a debt we can never repay.
Do you know someone who fought in WWII? If so, consider yourself fortunate. You still have access to a piece of living history. Make the most of it!
Jackie Minniti was born and raised in the heart of New Jersey where she spent 25 years as a classroom teacher and was a contributing education writer for the Courier Post. After retiring from teaching, she moved to Florida’s west coast and turned to writing full-time. She was a columnist for The Island Reporter in St. Petersburg, Florida and writes a blog featuring Florida authors. Her first novel, Project June Bug, the story of a young teacher’s efforts to help a student with ADHD, won eleven literary awards, including Premier Book Awards “Book of the Year.” Her middle grade novel, Jacqueline, is a WWII historical set in France. It received an Eric Hoffer Book Award, the Literary Classics Book Awards gold medal for historical fiction, and first place for middle grade fiction in the Florida Writers Association Royal Palm Literary Awards. Several of her stories have been included in Chicken Soup for the Soul collections. Jackie lives on Treasure Island with her husband and two rather noisy macaws, but she frequently travels back to New Jersey to visit her children and grandkids.
