A COLLECTION OF FAMILY HISTORIES AND STORIES by Cato Meador

(Originally posted on Facebook, 28 Feb 2011) Lately I have had several emails from fb friends asking me if I would tell the story of the actions that caused my Daddy to be awarded the Bronze Star and the Order of the Purple Heart, during World War II.  Since there is so little space in a post, I thought I could answer all of the requests in this manner.  Thank you to all who have shown such an interest.  Daddy would really not be happy with people knowing, because he would have never seen this as heroic or worth re-telling.  He was a very humble man who would tell you that fear of never seeing your wife, parents, siblings or Texas again is enough to just do what is necessary to survive. Daddy wasn't on the beach on D-Day.  He landed in Normandy, France on what would be known as D-Day plus 3, or the actual day of 9 June 1944.  He had been sick on the ride over, and miserable wouldn't have even begun to explain the way he felt.  He never talked ...

Back in the double dark ages of 1971, my classmates and I in Peggy Gray's sophomore English class at Greenville Senior High School in Greenville, Texas were informed we were going to do our first ever term paper.  I have to admit, it really didn't interest me at all. However, once I realized that I was never going to find a way to weasel out of it, I decided it was going to have to be on a subject that interested me. So....The Alamo. Early on, in a book called, "Thirteen Days to Glory" by Lon Tinkle...yeah, that's his name...I stumbled on the name Rosanna E. Cato. The book said that this was the name of the wife that I had always heard that Colonel William Barret Travis, Commander of The Alamo, had abandoned in Alabama, when he skipped out on debts and lawsuits to find his fortune in the Northern Mexican State of Texas. He also had abandoned his young son, Charles Edward and his wife was pregnant with a child, later named Susan Isabella. Now, I had known that...