Posted by Frances Johnson Hindman on May 3, 2009:

Robert Howard York was raised by his aunt and uncle, John & Eula Cooper in Alabama. I never knew Howard, but Aunt Eula was my father's sister, so my parents knew him. He was 28 years older than I, and after my father died when I was five, we moved back to SC. However, I have several letters he wrote during WWII, a copy of a military newspaper with an article about Howard, and a book entitled We Saw It Through, about the 331st Combat Team, and their experiences during the war. Howard was the commanding officer of this group. In the military, he was more frequently called Bob, but my parents always referred to him as Howard. Between 1963 and 1968, I saw him on television in charge of the troops going into the Dominican Republic. He was in Baltimore with troops when the Reverend Martin Luther King was killed, and he also came to Clemson to speak to the ROTC. (As luck would have it, I was sick and did not get to go meet him.) At one point, he was the commanding officer of the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg. In addition to WWII, Howard also was in Korea, and several tours in Vietnam. He retired as a Four Star General. Also I was never fortunate enough to know him personally, I considered him as part of our family and was extremely proud of him.

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