John G. Snyder, my uncle, died 62 years ago this week (June 29, 1944). He was killed on a troop ship crossing from England to France three weeks after D-Day. The ship either hit a mine or was hit by a torpedo. He and many others were lost at sea.

My uncle was eight years older than my father and I was not born until several years after his death. The local American Legion post in my Ohio hometown is named for him.

Just before he entered the Army in 1942, he and his sister (my aunt) married their fiancés in a double ring ceremony. After his death, his wife, Glenna, married again. It was a good marriage to a fine man, but she never forgot what might have been. She told me just before she died that I was always special to her. She didn’t have to say why: I was named after her first love.

My uncle’s death came just weeks after my father graduated from high school. My dad eventually became a member of the 82nd Airborne. Had the atom bomb not ended the war, he would have parachuted into Japan. It was estimated that U.S. casualties in an invasion of Japan might have reached one million. My grandparents might have lost two sons and I might not be here.

I write this not because my family’s story is any way unique or different. That’s the point: it’s not.

There are thousands of families who had sons go off to war, never to return; thousands of young brides who became young widows; thousands of children who grew up without fathers and thousands of families who will forever and always have an empty place at the table.

My uncle has seldom been in my thoughts over the years. It’s tough to mourn someone you never knew. But he came to mind three weeks ago on the anniversary of D-Day. In our newscast, we ran again an interview I did two years ago with Charles Harris of Charlotte. Mr. Harris passed away a few months ago, but in his youth he hit the beach with the first wave of Americans on D-Day and he saw many die. Like so many other veterans I have talked to, he broke down in tears, thinking of those who never returned.

We are losing 1,000 men every day from that World War II generation. Soon their stories will no longer be told by those who lived them, but will exist only in history books and taped interviews. Even now, just over 60 years later, the war seems ancient history for many who are young.

I have never been a flag waver. I think the flag has too often been used to cover up holes in the American dream, to hide the times this country has fallen short of the ideals on which it was founded.

However, I know a great deal about the sacrifice and the blood it took to protect what we cherish and if sometimes we lose sight of what that sacrifice meant, if the sacrifice itself is lost in the pages of history, what it bought for us is evident every day. We do remain for much of the world that ‘shining city on a hill’ referred to by a pilgrim preacher long before we actually became a country.

I don’t know what my uncle might have been. He was a civilian contractor for the Air Force before the war. He might have been an engineer, like my grandfather, or dabbled in politics as my father did. But his story, like many others, has no real ending. The war meant a great many ‘what ifs’ for hundreds of thousands; men who never lived to fulfill whatever potential they had. Even so, what they died for in World War Two was far more important than any single life. I hope we never forget that. I’m sure my uncle would appreciate it.

MOVIE OF THE WEEK

“Captain Blood” 1935

This is one of the most noteworthy movies in Hollywood history, although it would not appear on anyone’s list of the top 100. It made Errol Flynn an overnight star and it was the first of eight times that Flynn would co-star with Olivia De Havilland. Together they made one of the great pairings in screen history. Long before there were screen heartthrobs like Paul Newman, Robert Redford, George Clooney or Brad Pitt, there was Errol Flynn. His life was more colorful than anything he ever did on screen and in his day he was just as big, or bigger, than those four stars I mentioned above.

Flynn plays Peter Blood, a doctor in England just before 1700. He is unjustly accused of treason and sold into slavery. He escapes and becomes a pirate, at the end redeeming himself with service to his king and queen and winning the hand of De Havilland, who was just 18 when the movie was filmed. Flynn was only 26. The movie has everything: bravery, romance, humor, good guys and bad and a spirit seldom matched in movies you’ll see today.

One critic wrote in the 30’s that many American youngsters would give up both their bike and their baseball glove to be a character played by Errol Flynn and there is little doubt that a great many young men would have given up more than that just to “be” Errol Flynn. If you see this first movie of Flynn’s you will likely want to see the others.