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Book review

Usually the only books that I care to review are my own. But now my friend Jim Ellis, big man in politics and education for so many years, has published a gem of a book, “Len’s Boys,” with his collaborator Carol Payment Poole, about Tupper Lake men in the service in World War II writing letters home about their experiences.

Carol and Jim have modestly used no byline, but simply added this under the book title: “Collected and Annotated by Carol Payment Poole and James Ellis.”

As I started to read and flip through the 400-page book, I immediately came across the story of the five Littlefield boys in the service. One of those boys was my brother-in-law, John Littlefield, married to my sister Rita and a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge.

A much better review than I could do is on the back cover of the book, among others, so I am going to let Caroline M. Welsh, director emerita of Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, cover for me. Here is an excerpt from Ms. Welsh’s review: “Len’s Boys is a stirring chronicle of wartime adventures, love of home, service stateside and overseas, and the terrible toll paid by those who serve and their families. From May 1943 through the end of World War II, hundreds of Tupper Lake boys who volunteered to serve their country wrote with humor and pathos to three beloved high school mentors — Coach Len Perry, Principal Lawrence P. Quinn and Father Edmund Dumas.”

The book is available at Tupper Arts.

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