A letter to the editor published in the Fall 2001 issue of Lawrence Today
My wife, Ása, and I just came home from a vacation in Brittany and Normandy. While wandering through the thousands of crosses at the American cemetery in Normandy, looking at the names and ages and thinking of all the lives and sacrifices, Ása suddenly called me over to a particular stone:
"Look, a woman. And she died two and a half months after the war! After the death and dying should be over...."
We stood there talking for a good while: What was the story of her young life? She must have been a nurse or a doctor, maybe she was injured in the war and died later of her wounds, maybe driving somewhere and the vehicle struck a mine, maybe in an airplane crash. We left saying that, like all the other thousands buried there, we would never know who they were or what happened.
Yesterday I fetched the mail that had been held while we were away. Leafing through the summer issue of Lawrence Today, I saw the article "A life cut short, a life remembered," and it struck me: I know that name! And the date 1918-1945. Buried in France.
I asked Ása, "Does the name Elizabeth Richardson ring a bell?"
"Yes, the woman in the American cemetery."
"Look here; this is a picture and story about the woman whose grave we stood in front of last week wondering." We were dumbstruck. We just stood there with gooseflesh on our arms. "It's her! It has to be!"
Someone once told me that people are only dead if no one remembers them. Well, we will never forget Elizabeth Richardson [M-D '40], even if we did not know her.
Karl F. Eckner, '83
Oslo, Norway
