Nancy Hepner Goodman

My dad served as a Captain in the United States Army Air Force 340th Bombardment Group.  He was stationed at the Pompeii Airfield near Naples, Italy, close to the base of Mount Vesuvius, when it erupted in March 1944.  A skilled carpenter, a man who worked with his hands, somehow, Dad captured a piece of the lava and brought it home with him.

He may have told us the story, but as the youngest girl, with a brother three years older, many details were lost on me.  Clearly, he loved geology. This piece of Mount Vesuvius sat in his bedroom drawer, with a 1944 penny he stuck in the middle.

As kids, we would hold it with curious imagination.  It made the rounds for show and tell, but we had more to show, than tell.  I now have the rock, in my bedroom drawer.   My school-age daughter took it for her own show and tell story, and then again as years passed, when she taught a 3rd grade class about volcanos. 

The rock always returns to me for safekeeping.  Seventy-seven years later, it seems to be shrinking.  I see a few holes and slight cracks I didn’t notice before.  I long for Dad to fill in the blanks: about the rock, about the war, about himself.  I feel him with me, as I try to record this bit of history, with his pieces of the story missing.