I was the only baby born at Bristol Hospital on Valentine’s Day in 1940. My wife of 49 years, Bonnie, was a breast cancer survivor who was treated in the Cancer Care Center for lung cancer before she passed away on January 2017.

Last winter my life took a turn, I began experiencing back pain that I assumed was from shoveling snow. In July, I went to see my son Scott and his family in Okinawa, Japan, where he is stationed as a colonel in the United States Air Force.