This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything

here on this show, including your stories. Send them to Our American Stories. we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your

stories, send them to our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. And today,

we have one of our regular contributors, Joy Neal Kidney. And she's about to share her uncle's story.

This piece is titled Donald Wilson, The Hum humble hero. Most of the heroes among us

are just ordinary people, like my uncle Don. I knew him as mom's brother, who lived way out in

Washington State and who liked fishing. When I was a kid growing up on an Iowa farm,

the best part of getting a fat letter from Aunt Rose

was a picture of Uncle Don with a big salmon.

Mom's older brother had been a commercial fisherman.

Even when he later took a job with the Washington Department of Transportation,

he still headed out with his boat on Willa Bay every chance he got.

So every fishing season we get snapshots of him,

with a huge fish hanging from one hand and a fishing pole in the other.

Dressed in faded jeans and a plaid shirt,

usually a vest with lots of pockets.

Sometimes a U.S. Navy cat,

either the USS Hancock or the Yorktown.

Although mom rarely mentioned the war, World War II,

she told us that her brother Don, who grew up in the small town of Dexter, Iowa, had been a sailor on the famous Yorktown,

the one lost during a big battle in the Pacific Ocean,

...