“They say a person dies twice — once when they have their physical death and the second time when we stop saying their name.” https://jamesbwells.com/2023/09/25/giving-life/
This Memorial Day weekend, I wish to honor and mention the names of Wells family members who volunteered to defend our country during wartime.
My great-great-grandfather Richard Wells cut down trees to stop Confederate General Morgan’s Raiders through Southern Ohio in 1863. Ora McKinley Wells, grandson of Richard, was my grandfather and worked at a steel mill for 52 years, taking a break only to fight in WWI on the Meuse-Argonne front in France. Every labored breath I saw him take was a reminder of what the harmful effects of mustard gas can do. Ora’s two sons, Issac and Jack, my uncle and father, respectively, fought the Japanese in the Pacific in WWII. Isaac was in the 6th Infantry Division, which holds the record for the most consecutive days of continuous combat, 219, in the Pacific Theater. In addition to the stress of constant battle, he contracted multiple jungle diseases and suffered from recurring bouts of drug-resistant malaria. Isaac was in such bad shape by the end of the war he had to spend two years in a US Army hospital before he could go home. Jack made a career out of the US Army, did two tours in Vietnam, 1962 and 1965, and was killed when the Air America plane he was a passenger in mysteriously crashed. His death, still classified by the CIA, is the subject of my investigative memoir, Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew, to be launched Father’s Day weekend, June 14th.
“As long as someone still speaks their name, they shall never die.”
I have serious doubts that the CIA will release what they know of my father’s death during my lifetime. I can only pray that my memoir will allow my father’s name to be spoken so that he will not forgotten until the truth is known.
James B. Wells 