Dear friends: Today the library will be rededicated as the Rockville Memorial Library. It will be a short (half hour) outdoor ceremony, as long as it doesn't rain, and Richard, my husband and the father of Thomas, will be speaking. It is fitting. The families we worked with will be there, Tom and Carol Barbieri, Paula Davis, Nikki Bunting and the family of SPC (I think he was promoted but that's what's on the website for now) Tony Paci and hopefully Irwin Cohen who started this idea. The display cases filled up in the week after I took that picture--all of the families named here brought items, as well as the family of LTC James Walton. My biggest regret about this process is that we did not contact all of the families--some we just couldn't find and some we had some reason to believe wished to not be contacted but we should not have just assumed . . . It's hard to know what the right thing to do might be sometimes.

Louise Penny asked me to blog about this for her and that will go up on Memorial Day. I will put up a link of course, but I expect to do some writing here as well--my audience here is much different (and much smaller!) so it will definitely be a different post!

So many people have sent their best wishes to us--thank you to everyone!

Things are moving forward on the library front. May 28, at 11:00 a.m. is the dedication of Rockville Memorial Library. I have no idea of what kind of ceremony is being planned though I think it may be time to ask and perhaps push a little bit to make sure that things we want included are there. In preparation for this, there is a display of items in the Rockville Memorial Library's case: we lent some from Thomas, Anthony Paci's family lent some, and several veterans, still living, lent uniforms and medals. We had hoped to get enough things to have displays in all of the libraries with display cases (nine I think) but there was not much response obviously. They want to do this again in November, and I think that with more lead time they may have more success. Richard and his mother and I went to Rockville yesterday to look at the display and I will try to include a photograph.

I wonder if some of the lack of response had to do with the kind of thing that happened to us--pulling out those items led to more tears, something I had not expected though I guess I should have. It was the first time I had read Michael Bordelon's letter in a couple of years and it was difficult. We put that letter in the display--I hope that people take the time to read it. I did watch the public a little yesterday and they paused to look, but no one really lingered.

My quilting needs to step up a bit as the triplets were born the day before yesterday! All is well but I am experiencing a little "quilter's block". OK, bad pun. And my grand-daughter is now officially at term so in a few days or at most weeks, I will be a grandmother. A lot rests on those tiny little shoulders, as I think we expect this birth to lead to some healing. New life--we are all excited and a little bit sad that Thomas is not here to see her.