By BILL WELCH
Morning News city editor
A five-year-old boy sat on the curb in Painted Post, N.Y. and watched.
It was wartime. His father was in the Navy. His mother was at work in a factory. He was on his own, but under the watchful eye of neighbors
in this small town.
The little boy, Richard Hawley, watched big, green U.S. Army trucks rumble by on Route 17. One after another, they went past, carrying smiling, joking soldiers to some new assignment.
Young
Richard watched them and wondered where they were going. Where did they all come from?
""Anytime I see or read anything about World War II, I think about that,'' Hawley said. He lives in Cambridge Springs
now.
""I always wondered if there was a chance of meeting those guys who went by in thse convoys and I wonder about those men. How many of them were killed?
""All those guys looked like they
never had care in the world. They were so carefree.''
Painted Post was near Corning, N.Y. Hawley thinks the soldiers he saw were coming from Fort Drumm.
His mother worked at Ingersoll-Rand in Painted Post.
What struck the five-year-old funny was that she and her sister wore pants when they went to work. He knew women were supposed to wear dresses.
Later, the family moved to Erie where Mrs. Hawley worked at GE.
The move to the bigger community was scary to Hawley.
That was part of World War II for him, but mostly he remembers the truckloads of troops.
""I feel like it was part of history.''
