Edward Italo Lorenzi, July 17, 1923 - December 1, 2002

February 5, 2020. My father was a classic child raised in the Depression who went to war as part of the 'greatest generation' and came home to run a massive steel-making operation, to raise ten kids, and to live the American Dream. Sister Fran sent me a package with some of our memories of Ed.

After graduating from high school in Creighton, Pennsylvania in 1941, Ed attended college at Washington & Jefferson, a small private college south of Pittsburgh. After entering the Army Air Force, dad was a navigator in a bomber in England, 1944-45. In the photo you can see one of his silk scarves, with a map of Germany. My best guess is that it was intended for use were he to be shot down over Germany; I know that he had detailed paper navigational maps of the USA from his training in Louisiana. He would have flown in Japan but he was en route to the Pacific theater when the war in Japan ended. He was mustered out in time to get back to his college career, this time at Penn State, where he met Paige Heath, the woman he would marry in 1947 and the mother of his ten children, from Allen (b. 1948) to Mark (b. 1963). I was third (b. 1951).

After marriage, dad started to write a Christmas letter and he included a family photo. He did this for 25 years, from marriage in 1947 to their twenty-fifth anniversary in 1972. The photo shows some of letters and photos from those times.