My father survived World War II, returning to his hometown of Gibsonton, Florida, to marry a Floyd County, Virginia, woman he met in Norfolk while serving in the Navy. I came along in 1947 – a baby boomer child to a young family just starting out in postwar America.

But that American dream ended short of my second birthday when an accident at the U.S. Phosphorus Plant in Tampa killed my father and widowed my mother.