Reflections

Hello everyone, hope you’re having a good week. Tuesday I attended my first meeting with the Water Valley Ambassadors since moving back to town. I made  some new friends and visited with some old ones.  
We accompanied Mayor Hart to Le Mojo’s catering and confections, located at 101 North Main Street, for a ribbon cutting ceremony. Lara Sossaman is the owner and the business name is derived from the middle names of Lara, her sister and mother who help her.
They are very personable and should do very well as they do birthday, wedding and specialty cakes, weekly specials and a variety of cupcakes. Some examples of their delicious specialty cakes include sweet potato roll, cream cheese, Danish, Heath bar, coconut, and Cajun cakes. They make good coffee and the cupcakes they gave us were very good–I’m going to predict the business will be a success. I know this is more Betty’s area of expertise and my first attempt to write in this area, so I hope I did it right.  
The section last week honoring the veterans was great and I’m just going to do a brief follow up.  I knew so many of those guys personally and I’d like to name a few that weren’t mentioned.  
Wade Doolin, Chester Joiner, Dudley Kelley, John Ashford and Tom Ashford were World War II veterans. H.F. Wright was in Korea and  was killed in action. Wade Doolin and the Ashford brothers were friends as far back as I can remember.
It was my privilege to interview and become friends with Chester Joyner, who was a combat veteran with several medals.  I had never met Dudley Kelley until I interviewed him and found him to be a wealth of information from his 32 years service in the Navy. He was on the aircraft carrier, Wasp that was sunk in the Solomon islands.
Kelley was also in charge of ground support for the famous Blue Angels and retired as a Lieutenant Commander.  
Most of them are gone now but the good life we enjoy now was due to the millions who fought and died when we still won our wars.  I feel proud and humbled that I knew as many of them as I did and that seems to be a good place to close this week’s column.  
My email address is cncooper1@hotmail.com or write me at P.O. Box 613189 Memphis, TN 38101 and have a great week.