Pictured from left: Joan Keenan, Michael Bentley, Nancy Hubert, Joe Byron of Honor Flight New England and Jim Freehling, President of Brookhaven at Lexington.
Before a packed room, Brookhaven president Jim Freehling took the podium to pay tribute to a team of “greatest generation” residents gathered to celebrate the publication of their new book of essays entitled A Common Purpose.
The book is a collection of personal stories and first-hand accounts of the World War II era. “We wanted to capture the stories,” Freehling said. “These are fading memories and it is very important.”
Freehling paid tribute to Nancy Hubert who he said “really didn’t know what she was getting into!” Nancy acted as the editor for the book and Freehling credits her energy and determination for the success of the project. He also acknowledged Bob Kingston who coordinated the photos for the book. The project was funded in part through a generous grant from The Dana Foundation.
In addition Freehling acknowledged the gracious assistance of Michael Bentley of Bentley Publishing who donated his services to the project. Freehling said, “It is very professionally done and we couldn’t have done it without Michael and his crew.”
Finally, Freehling announced that proceeds from the book sales would go to Honor Flight New England, a company that provides flights to the Washington WWII memorial.
Nancy Hubert thanked her fellow residents who were very supportive of the project “Even if they didn’t have a story in the book, people encouraged me, people asked me about the book and you can’t know what a boost that gave me as I was struggling with finding this or that,” she said. She also expressed special appreciation to Joan Keenan, Heidi White and Kathryn McCarthy who first had the idea to publish the WWII memories of their fellow residents. Hubert also thanked Brookhaven staffer Laura Anderson who “bailed me out many times.”
A special highlight of the program was several personal reminiscences Joan Kennan told of joining the army as a WAV and taking a secret Naval Security Course course at Radcliffe. Bob Solo described a special trip to Rome and a visit to a restaurant where he an his buddies “ordered and ate everything on the menu.”
Most touching was a battlefield recollection of Charles Ketcham who described meeting the eyes of a wounded German soldier: “We were two blue eyed boys in a woods of chaos.”
A Common Purpose is a very personal record of WWII with seventy-two stories by sixty-nine authors.
An enthusiastic crowd purchased books after the speaking program.
To purchase the book, visit www.linnaeanpress.com
“A Common Purpose”
