'My dad signed up to serve in WWII. He was color blind and the only branch of the military that would take him was the Seabees. This photo was taken in California before he was deployed to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. While in California on a weekend pass he went horseback riding with friends and met a WAVE. She was my mom. They fell very much in love and he carried her picture all through the war. Her name was Thelma Elaine Austin and she came from Burlington, Vermont. My dad was a math genius and could calculate any math equation in his head. Before graduating from Hanson, Massachusetts (Whitman High) his teachers went to my grandparents and wanted him to attend college for his gift. My dad knew they would cash in their life insurance policy to send him so he signed up before they could. He would have chosen to serve his country either way. In the Aleutians when asked who could run a big bulldozer parked in their midst, he jumped up and said 'I can!' He had never been on one in his life, but figured it could not be too much different than the farm equipment he operated at home growing up. In this photograph my dad had earned machinist mate third class. By the time the war ended, he was a first class machinist mate. After discharge from the military, he attended engineering school in Boston. This photo is important to me because of the legacy he left his children and all of the generations to come. He is an important part of history and WWII and what Tom Brokaw calls 'The Greatest Generation.' I have to add, one of the most moving (to me) photos my dad sent my mom for their scrapbook was of the American flag flying high over a Japanese cemetery where our fallen soldiers were decorated with wreaths and he simply wrote 'The price we paid for peace.' Pictured: David Rodney Ibbitson.'
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