………………..The photo is of my uncle……..VITO COLONNA…….He was married to my father’s sister Mary……He was her first love…They had two beautiful daughters, Phyllis and Grace…..and I mean beautiful physically, inside and out, with great hearts….He died in France during WWll from a gunshot to the head…..My Aunty Mary, like so many others, was a young widow with two very young daughters…..He was killed many years before I was born so I never knew him. I only heard stories, mostly from my mother, who said he was a wonderful man….very kind, and my mother said….movie star handsome…with beautiful green eyes….His two daughters looked very much like their dad and resembled his family…..My Aunt Mary and her two daughters lived in an apartment in my grandfather’s house where we also lived. The two girls were about the same ages as my brothers so they were extremely close, and always together….like brothers and sister more that cousins….I have lovely pictures of the four of them that my mother gave to me…..My Aunt eventually married again, and had two more daughters…….My cousin Phyllis, the older daughter, had two beautiful talented sons….Ricky and Jim…..She died from breast cancer when she was in her 30s…..This too was many many years ago….I was a teenager ….I remember she was very young, and her passing was very sad…It was very hard for the boys to lose their mother at such young ages….She adored them and they adored her….Her sister, my cousin Grace, had two children….a daughter and a son….Laura and Joe……Grace just passed away from colon cancer earlier this month….She was a wonderful beautiful person with a great wit and a wonderful laugh…She had beautiful green eyes….like her dad……Grace was very close to her half sisters….Grace became the matriarch after my Aunt Mary passed away……….Now they are finally all together…..my Uncle Vito, my Aunt Mary with their two girls….Phyllis and Grace…..who he never got to see grow up, and become wonderful people…or to see his four grandchildren………On this Memorial Day I wanted to remember my Uncle Vito……who I never knew…..but wished I had.