My wife’s ex-employer’s family patriarch has expired. Actualy, he died last friday evening and his wake is tonight.

Babe served in the second world war, on the battleship North Carolina. The USS North Carolina was one of the ships shelling Iwo Jima prior to the invasion.

Babe once told me, with tears in his eyes, that he stood at the rail of the North Carolina and watched the thousands of marines dying on the meat grinder of Mount Suribachi, and he prayed, and he wept, along with hundreds of his fellow seamen.

May God hold you in the hollow of his mighty hand, Babe. You deserve the finest the afterlife has to offer. I have known finer men, but the list is damned short.