Corporal Leonard W. Putnam

May 25, 1945 – May 25, 2009

“They fell with their faces to the foe.”

He was a 42 year old piano salesman from Jersey City, New Jersey.
He was married to my wife’s great aunt. They had no children.

“There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.”

He was killed by a Japanese mortar shell on Okinawa.

“They shall not grow old,
As we that are left grow old.”

His scroll, signed by the President of the United States, has been on my
Wall since 1970 lest his name be forgotten, reads

“He stands in the unbroken like of patriots who dared to die
That freedom may live, and grow, and increase its blessings.
Freedom lives, and through it he lives –
In a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.”

Let free men everywhere lift a glass to the memory of

Corporal Leonard W. Putnam

“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.”