Army

William B. Harrison, Jr. Army, World War II

My handsome Grandfather, William B. Harrison, Jr., served in the Aleutian Islands, during World War II.

My grandfather was 95 years old when he passed away in 2015. I was so fortunate to have known him for almost 40 years. He was a medic during the battle of Attu and fought as part of the Pacific Theater. He wrote my grandmother during the war and after, they met in Florida to get married.

An interesting story from the war wasn’t about the battle, although there were some of those. My grandfather had an overactive thyroid while he was in the field and underwent emergency thyroid surgery while in service. Thankfully, he survived the surgery and the war. I am so grateful for his service and for all the veterans that are a part of the Greatest Generation. He retire from the Post Office in 1980. My love of music, my interest in history, and my amateur rock collection can all be traced back to my grandparents influence.

His father, William B. Harrison, served in World War I. He was still in the US (right outside Chicago) when he came down with H1N1 flu epidemic (the Spanish Flu). Miraculously, he survived and ended up working in the hospital. He witnessed much loss of life from this terrible flu and wrote back home about it. He also tracked a daily death count in the bible his brother gave him. My family has been able to study the history of this time through his personal accounts. He was truly an amazing individual. He wrote a book, The Prince of Raccoon Fork, and went on to become an attorney after the war. He later worked for the IRS in many prominent cases.