The following article is provided by www.BlufftonForever.com, a project of Bluffton Icon founder and former editor Fred Steiner.
By Charles Hilty
December 7, 2011 - Seventy years ago this afternoon my life changed.......just as it changed dramatically for every American.
Every Pearl Harbor Day I recall where I was and how I heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. I can remember places and faces and even the things that were said.
And as I get older, I learn new things about the questions that this 7-year-old boy was asking his parents in the kitchen of that little white wooden cottage on Spring Street, one block behind the old Victorian grade school where I was getting my education. My education in the life of the larger world began that afternoon when our family first heard the news about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
We'd had a Sunday lunch after church there at the little home of my recently-married cousin, Margie Neeper, and her young husband, Vyrl.