Thank you very much for the photo essay of Fort Rosecrans. My father's memorial marker is there; when he died several years ago, we scattered his ashes out at sea, near his beloved Coronado Islands, where he used to go deep-sea fishing. After all the fish he had caught out there and eaten, he felt that it was only fair to return the favor.

John Arthur Webster spent 30 years in the US Navy, enlisting at age 17 in mid-1941. He was aboard the USS San Francisco (CA-38) at both Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Guadalcanal. He went ashore with the third wave of Marines at Guam to help set up a communications station. He did all that before he was 20 years old. In December 1945, he came back to the States and convinced my mom to break off her existing engagement and elope with him--all in less than 30 days (his leave period). For 20 years, our family lived primarily in Naval housing as we traveled across the US, over to Morocco, back to the US, over to the Philippines, and back to the US, where we finally bought a house in La Mesa in 1961 (Mom still lives in that same house). Dad taught at the Anti-Submarine Warfare school there in San Diego, then went on to do two tours of duty in Vietnam, one in the USS Piedmont (AD-17) and the other in the USS Providence (CLG-6), before finally retiring. I love him, I'm proud of him, and I miss him.

My son, Jon Anderson Webster, is scheduled to enter USMC boot camp at Pendleton next Monday--to be followed by Infantry training. I am likewise so proud of my son's choice--and I know my dad would be, too. ..bruce..

By lucky accident, work took me back out to Point Loma Tuesday morning. In the extended entry are post-Memorial Day photographs I took with my camera phone of some of the gravesites featured in Monday's post. It was clear that all of these heroes still have people who remember them every year.