A while back during Veterans Day, I was trying to post a sort of remembrance of my uncle Ismael who was in the US Army during World War II. I was just 7 years old when my grandparents got a letter from the San Antonio Express with a clipping of my uncle who had been wounded in Belgium. I didn’t know him or what he looked like until I saw the clipping.

I didn’t know the significance of it until I was much older. By that time he had passed away. When my grandparents passed, we were going through their stuff and I found that clipping. Re-reading it I found that he had been a baker in civilian life and also in the Army.

Also I found out that in 1945 the Germans had attacked on all fronts and most of the soldiers who were in the rear including bakers and mechanics  were mobilized to become Infantrymen and were given weapons to defend in what we call now the “Battle of the Bulge” in Bastogne, Belgium.

Later in life, he had married and still returned to his job as a baker. However, we didn’t see much of them except when there was a problem with my grandfather’s drinking. He would come to pacify things.

Much later he joined his wife Juanita to open a non-denominational Christian church on the corner of San Jacinto and San Fernando St. in which his children and grandchildren followed in their footsteps and which still continues to thrive.