Our first big shoot was in Huntington, West Virginia.  There we met with Walter Carter, who flew down from his home outside of Boston to show us the places that were significant in the life of his father Norval, as well as the places where Walter himself grew up.  We visited Norval's childhood home, where right across the street lived his future wife, Emmafern, or Fernie as she was called.  We also took a tour of the house where Norval and Fernie had begun to raise their family, and where Walter grew up.  For Walter, Huntington is the home of his childhood memories: the backyard where he and his brother played, the window out of which he fell and had to be rushed to the hospital, and the mantle where his mother kept a framed picture of his father.

Walter is not only deeply connected to the famous cemetery at Normandy, but to the quiet cemetery in Huntington where Fernie was laid to rest in 1995.  The two people who had been in love since they were still children, who lived in houses across the street from each other, who since they met had rarely spent time apart, now rest over 4000 miles from each other.  Perhaps it could be said that they each remain in the place wherein they made their ultimate commitment.

In the peaceful town of Huntington, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which Norval had never left, but stayed in Huntington as a doctor, ultimately buried alongside his beloved Fernie.  But then perhaps, being the kind of person he was, he would have forever felt the burden of knowing that there were men far away whom he would’ve had the expertise to save.