The day before D-Day on June 5, I received an email from a stranger who wrote in the subject line: “Your Father’s Trunk from WWII.” The writer  saw the Navy-issued trunk pictured above in the alley behind her apartment building in Culver City, walked past it, thought for a moment and recalled as a young girl seeing in her two Grandfathers’ homes the same vintage trunks from their years of service as Marines in the Pacific during WWII. She turned around, saw a name impressed on the front –  Leon Rosove MC. USNR – thought this Navy man’s family, if she could find them, may want it, and she and her husband carried the trunk to their apartment building for safe-keeping.

She went online and googled the name and then wrote to me in that email: “When I googled Leon Rosove I came across THIS article from your blog which is how I found you.”

I responded to her immediately, and we arranged for my son to drive to her apartment on his way home from work the next day, pick up the trunk, and deliver it to me. On the trunk’s lid is the red emblem of the US Marine Corps and the words “Semper Fidelis” (“Always Faithful”).  

I remember well my Father’s Navy trunk/footlocker from my childhood home. Inside he kept his pristine white Navy Cap and other mementos from his naval service in the South Pacific during WWII. Years after he died and my mother sold our home the trunk ended up for a while in my grandmother’s garage in the mid-Wilshire district of LA, and eventually it was emptied of its contents (I have that cap) and was given away – until it reappeared on June 5th ready for the trash heap.

Lt. Col. Leon Rosove, MD, 1942

My Dad was a physician in private practice in Santa Monica on December 7, 1941 when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 8, President Roosevelt declared war against Japan. On December 9, my Father re-enlisted as a Naval Reserve officer, got his orders, packed his trunk, and sailed in late January 1942 on a Navy vessel from San Diego, CA. to Hawaii. On February 2, his vessel entered Pearl Harbor. He wrote soon thereafter to his Philadelphia cousins about what he saw and knew – the massive oil and wreckage in the waters that contained 19 Navy ships including 8 battleships all sunk to the bottom of the harbor. 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, perished that day.

My Dad (1905-1959) served in the US Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the medical staff of the Aiea Naval Hospital in Honolulu (1942-1943) and as the navy’s chief and only medical officer on Midway Atoll (1943 to 1944). He loved the year in Hawaii healing soldiers and working alongside his fellow colleagues and hospital staff. The year in Midway was lonely as he was the only medical officer there and he had to share that small piece of territory with millions of migrating birds whose squawking and squealing made sleep at times impossible.  

Earlier in the day on June 6 this year, I watched President Biden speak at the Normandy Cemetery and offer words of tribute to the few surviving soldiers and the 195,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries who stormed the beaches of France on 7,000 ships and landing craft. 73,000 allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded in the battle of Normandy. Of the 4,414 allied troops killed on D-Day itself, 2,501 were Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. All of them saved western civilization from the tyranny of the Nazis.

The blog noted above tells the story of the birth of our grandson two+ years ago and that his parents (our son and daughter-in-law Daniel and Marina) named him Leon after my Dad. When little Leon grows up, I will present to him this trunk (which I intend to restore) used by my Father, little Leon’s great-grandfather born 116 years before.

I’m so grateful to Lindy Townes for her thoughtfulness in finding me and returning this old and weathered WWII artifact that carries my father’s name and inspires so many memories of his life, now long passed, but ever alive in my heart.

Our parallel family stories intersected on the 80^th anniversary of D-Day, and I’m grateful for that as well. She wrote to me the following after my son Daniel visited her and retrieved the trunk, and she included this photograph:

Lindy Townes – June 6, 2024

Hi John, 

I am so very glad that your Dad’s trunk has made its way back to you!

[Our meeting] does feel like a divine intervention with the Anniversary of D-Day. My family, especially my parents, have enjoyed following along with this story as well!

[I am] Lindy Townes and my husband is Rivers Townes. Both of my maternal grandparents, Captain Genevieve Irene Burns and Captain Henry Lee Burns, were in the Marine Corps. They met and were married at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before my grandfather deployed to Iwo Jima where he was wounded in action in 1945. My paternal grandfather Wallace James Holts Sr. was in the Navy and served on the USS Gwin DM-33 in the Pacific from 1944-1946. 

I feel so happy to have been able to make this connection and to get your Dad’s trunk back to you and your family. I hope that you all now will have it to remember your Dad and the name “Leon” for generations to come!

Best, 

Lindy 

We intend to meet when she and her husband, recently married, return from their honeymoon.