FALLING STARS
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The years following Harry’s birth were good
ones. The war ended later that year, and thousands of young men returned home
from Europe and the Pacific. By 1947, both Nancy and Heidi were married, Heidi
to the young man who had been sent home because of injury, Nancy to an actor
who had appeared with her in a movie in 1946. Jack and Rose welcomed five more
grandchildren into the world by 1956, one belonging to Gregory and Emily, the
others, two each, belonging to Nancy and Heidi.
Libby chose not to remarry, but instead
pursued a career as a scientist, making several important advances in the field
of medicine, and in the study of radiation. She left Chippewa Falls late in
1945, moving back to Philadelphia.
Andrew had been too young for World War II,
but he was just the right age for the Korean War, coming through unscathed and
quickly rising in prominence in the military. He was very proud of the military
industrial complex, so much so that his siblings were often heard to call him
insufferable.
The 1950’s were both a time of prosperity and
a time of fear, of Communism, of nuclear war, of the threat of the Soviet
Union, but the Dawsons weathered the storm, continuing the same level of
prosperity and happiness that they had known for so many years before.
In 1960, Jack and Rose’s first
great-grandchildren came into the world within a week of each other--Peter
Georges, the son of Moira and her husband, Terry, and Elizabeth Calvert, the
daughter of Paul Calvert and his wife, Francine. The Calverts lived not far
away, in Pittsburgh, and Jack and Rose saw a great deal of this
great-granddaughter.
Life was good to Jack and Rose, in spite of
their "insufferable" military son and the trials of being the parents
of a teenager so late in life. Tensions rose when the Vietnam war began and
Harry showed a great deal of opposition to it, while his brother Andrew
supported it whole-heartedly, but they were confident that they could weather
this storm as well.