Written By Merlene Law Malone-Barrett, A MOTHER'S SONG

Whom of us has not been touched by a war that they have been close to or involved in? What does a mother feel when her seventeen year-old son leaves to serve his country? Having observed and read about the many ways people react to a war on the horizon, and especially an article in the San Bernardino Sun newspaper entitled, "Mothers Song on Children in the War", may be a hit, I immediately thought back to a little mother and a song she had written for this young man, her son, whom had left home to serve his country in World War I in 1918. This mother, my grandmother, Bessie Isabel Bickley Law, had bade her eldest son "good-bye" and having been a composer of music and verse, she sat down to her piano and wrote the words to this little song in her attempt to quiet her fears and diminish the frustration she must have felt back in the war years of the early 20th century. The young man of whom she wrote is my father, Walton LeGrande Law, born in 1898, whom is 93 years old at the time of this writing. Walton LeGrande Law died in 1998 at 100 years old. By Merlene Law Malone-Barrett.