Memorial Day Tribute / Washington DC Update
A True American Hero
Eugene Parmer
01/12/1917 - 04/27/2013
A young handsome man, Eugene Parmer of Iowa served our country well during World War II. His duties included gathering intelligence data from Dachau Concentration Camp. Arriving at a locked gate, he shot the lock off and was mobbed by a group of Jewish prisoners. They didn't want to hurt him, they simply wanted his U.S. flag pins as a souvenir of their long awaited American liberator. He saw things in the camp that would give him nightmares but he treated the prisoners with kindness and respect. He is a true American Hero so we salute his service and his life today.
We are thinking of him and all the others that fought for our freedom this Memorial Day weekend. God bless the Parmer family as they grieve the loss of their beloved husband, father and grandfather. May God bless the United States of America.
Young author / illustrator Amanda DeVilder documented his story through a book entitled A True American Liberator. Sadly, just days before Eugene's death we were turned down for a grant to put his book in local schools in Iowa. We are making it our mission to obtain funding this summer so his book can go into schools next fall.
While at a conference in Washington DC recently I met Rhonda Lyle who lives in the area. Rhonda was so impressed with the writing project, she volunteered to be a Writing Coach for me.
Rhonda already has several writing projects going including her own daughter Danielle who is writing and illustrating the story of Inge Augerbacher who was a Jewish child survivor. Inge was born in Germany and spent three years between 7-10 years of age in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, where out of 15,000 children, about 1 percent survived. It's a remarkable story of survival! An incredible fact is that Inge went into the camp with her baby doll and came out of the camp with the toy as well. It's truly an amazing story and we cannot wait to see Danielle's book come to fruition.
Rhonda and Danielle will meet and interview Inge this summer (a goal of ABBM is to have students meet their subjects whenever possible). Rhonda will be a writing coach to a number of other children in the DC area as well. If you are interested in becoming a writing coach (helping young people achieve this goal of writing a children's book for the next generation) contact Jeanieabbm@gmail.com. To learn more about Inge's story visit www.ingeauerbacher.com.
