by Lorene Delany-Ullman

One-fifth of my hometown was once an army airbase. Eager cadets became pilots, navigators and bombardiers. After V-J Day, the land and buildings were converted into schools, the county fairgrounds, and city hall. Land banking made men rich: lima beans and celery, cleared from the fields, were replaced by tract houses built on raised foundations. Our streets had Irish names; Watson, Dublin, and Shamrock linked into a three-block loop. We didn’t …