My Dad, Leo E Lamy, was born in Manchester, NH in 1923. He was part of a large family growing up on the West Side of Manchester. In 1942, he was employed as a welder by the Fore River Shipbuilding Corp in Quincy, Massachusetts working on several US Navy ships to include the USS Lexington. He enlisted in March 1943, attended basic training at Ft Devens, Massachusetts and then went to Vehicle Operations and Maintenance technical school at Chanute Field. He deployed overseas to Italy in 1943 and served 23 months with the 15th Army Air Force at Foggia Airfield in logistic support of bomber and fighter operations. When the war ended in Europe, he was destined to join the Army Infantry in the Pacific for the planned invasion of Japan but when the war ended in August 1943, he spent the remaining time of his 3-year enlistment assisting in the drilling of water wells throughout war-torn Italy. He was discharged from the military on 6 January 1946 as a Tec-5 (Corporal). He and my Mom were married in August 1947 and I came along 6 years later.
He used the GI Bill to learn radio and television repair and I accompanied him on several neighborhood calls to repair broken TVs, usually by replacing a broken vacuum tube. Up until the time I left home for USAFA in 1971, he worked as a foreman in a shoe factory and gave me my first job at $1.60 per hour. The morning I departed for the Academy he gave me a little plastic boot (a display or marketing model), with the advice: “Put this on your desk and when it gets tough, look at this boot, remember where you came from, and think about the great opportunity you’ll have as opposed to what your Dad is doing.” Pretty good advice even to this day!
