Granddaughter lovingly preserves WWII vet's stories

[Omaha Steve]

Jim Stoysich with his granddaughter Anna, who moved in with him to care for him and record his stories after his cancer diagnosis last year. While in the Navy during World War II, Jim Stoysich worked in shipyards, including at Pearl Harbor. He died last month.


http://www.omaha.com/news/military/granddaughter-lovingly-preserves-wwii-vet-s-stories/article_57fbd10f-0bf2-5e6d-b8cd-19af664f7671.html

POSTED: MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2015 12:30 AM
By Steve Liewer / World-Herald staff writer

When Jim Stoysich’s health started to fail early last year, his granddaughter heeded the family’s call for help.

Anna Stoysich, an Omaha native, quit her teaching job at a Montessori school in rural Mexico, quickly and quietly married her fiancé, Jorge Chavez, and came home. She moved in with her widowed 93-year-old grandpa at his farmhouse just north of Villisca, Iowa, becoming not only his nurse and his cook but also his ghostwriter.

Within weeks of her arrival, doctors spotted a tumor in Jim Stoysich’s lung, so Anna, 36, knew time was short. During months to come, she recorded his stories on her iPad: of a Depression-era childhood in Nebraska; of work in Navy yards from Hawaii to Maine before and during World War II; of his family and work life as a machinist in Omaha; and of his retirement to the Villisca farm.

Besides his well-worn memories, Jim Stoysich gave Anna a trove of letters he wrote to his family during the war, describing everyday life in the middle of extraordinary events. Those included the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which he witnessed up close. From this rich material, she assembled a 44-page memoir.

FULL story at link.



Jim Stoysich's 1944 Navy portrait

[Ms. Yertle]

1. Very, very cool

I wish I had recorded or written down my dad's stories.