Mechanically Festooned Codex

Bill Poovey article in today's Palm Beach Post.

This morning I read the above article on the front page of the Palm Beach Post and have been weeping ever since. It brought back a horrible memory from 1968 that I have never been able to shake. I had received a phone call from a friend of my parents that they had just been notified of my brother's death in Vietnam, so I was on the first flight I could catch for Buffalo to be with them. The flight landed without incident, and in those days we politely sat in our seats until the stairs were rolled up to the door to get off the plane. As I sat there in my stupor of grief I was watching the baggage go down the conveyor belt into the carts, when a flag draped coffin rolled out. It actually struck me physically in the chest, such a visual reminder of why I was there. I don't know whose coffin it was, which young kid was being shipped home, but I realized that was how my brother would come home also for the last time. I never told anybody how upsetting this incident was, or indeed that it even happened. So, I want to thank John Holley for his quest for a dignified welcome for war dead, and I join him in hoping no one ever faces this again.