Diane Holloway

Brushes with Greatness: a Chronicle of Five Generations of American Life Diane Holloway

The Walkers serve their nation in every war starting with the Civil War, where Caleb fights for the South. In this sequel to Caleb's experiences with Hood's Texas Brigade, his son Hood Lee joins Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Then his son Junior serves with Harry Truman in France. Next comes Hood Lee Walker III (Trey) who after Pearl Harbor joins the Navy and serves under John Kennedy on the PT 109. After transferring to submarines, he is involved in the rescue of a downed airman named George Bush. The next son, called H. L., while acting as a male nurse in Viet Nam, treats a pair of wounded officers, Colin Powell and H. Norman Schwarzkopf. The last Walker to serve, Lee, as a military policeman acts as bodyguard to Schwarzkopf during the Persian Gulf War. But there is more to the stories of these five men than their military service. Each falls in love, marries and has children, some of whom will not survive. Nor will every marriage survive because of infidelities. There are absorbing side issues such as the fight for school desegregation, and families torn by all the stresses to be expected in a five-generation span of American experience.