Excerpt from Roy A. Gulley: Journey to a Larger Sphere

It was more than twenty years ago and my husband and I were alone in our home in Sesser after thirty six years of marriage and all the joys, sorrows, the happiness and the plain hard work of rearing and educating a houseful of children.

We had lived through three and a half years of the horror of World War II and were longing for the day when it would be over and our boys would be home and all our children and their families, along with the millions of other families, could begin building their lives for themselves in a normal world of peace.

My husband had been re-elected to a second term in the State Legisla ture and the new session had met and organized the week before, and adjourned until the following Monday, when they would go back to Springfield and start to work. I would go with him for the two or three days each week, and we would be at home in Sesser for the week ends.

Then on Thursday, January 18, 1945, it happened. Without any warning my whole world tumbled down around me, and after the first horrible shock and weeks of bewilderment and disbelief I had to accept the fact that he was gone and that life could never be the same for me or my children.

There were six of them living then; all of them except one were married and she lived and worked in St. Louis. One son was in the combat zone in the Battle of the Bulge in Germany. One had just returned from six months in the South Pacific on an aircraft carrier and was stationed at the Naval Base near San Francisco. One was employed in a large ammunition plant near St.

Louis where as a physicist he supervised the manufacture of rifle shells and other supplies for the army. One daughter was with her husband at an air field in Arizona where he was an instructor pilot and one daughter lived with her husband and family in Salem, Illinois.

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