Uncle lost Christmas Eve, 1944; still searching

The best glimpses into Buddy’s life number about three or four:  my childhood experiences in Kalispell at his parents’ home when I played with his fishing and hunting stuff in the garage and in the cellar.  At that time his stuff had lain basically untouched about 8 or 10 years, so things were dirty and a bit rusty.  The next time perhaps 5 years later was in the photography period of my childhood when I inherited his 2.25 x 3-in negatives from my mother.  Some of the negatives were of forest service people, some of the house in Kalispell, and a lot of them were military.  Next, the Army reunion in 2006 of Bud’s Company E didn’t really tell me all that much about Buddy, but I rubbed shoulders with 7 men who had surrounded him and I got a sense of the kind of people they were:  smart, peaceful, fun-loving, and bonded together by their life threatening experiences in the war.  The last really good quality look I got was from his high school annual and its 69 inscriptions.  

Several leads have taken me down some other limited paths:  examples were his platoon commander’s life of Lt. MacWilliams, the newspaper article in the Kalispell Interlake that Gary WIlliams found describing the letter his parents received of his death.

This story never will be wrapped up, but at some point I will allow it to lie dormant.  Not until I visit some archives in Missoula and Kalispell and possibly in Glacier Park.  There just has to be some records from Huckleberry Mountain Lookout around 1940-42.

I am getting better at history.