Additional Commentary from Jim

In the gallery above, Hazel and Irving are shown in 1942 with their two sons: Bob on the left in his Navy Officers dress uniform and Jim on the right with his Army dress uniform. A family story says that Jim was an aid to General Patton at Potsdam, and was serving tea to the leaders Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. He spoke little of it, as he was working and not listening. These young men were a source of worry to the whole family. Jim heard his parents’ concern, as his father also had two brothers in the armed forces during WWII.

Jim Liljestrand would have been 5 at the time of the end of the War and attentive to the sentiments of his parents. His father Robert was a conscientious objector, stayed working in civilian war efforts at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (depth charges for antisubmarine warfare) and Waldorf Paper Company in St Paul, Minnesota (contracts for containers for shipping both ammunition and Red Cross supplies for combat injuries). Robert moved his family back to Lyla’s home town of St Paul, so should he be drafted Lyla and the two boys would be near her family, all of whom whom still in St Paul.