Inherited family letters had the unexpected consequence of drawing me into WWII. My father, Richard Berkey, served as an Army medic in Europe, and my aunt, Lucy Berkey, served as a Navy WAVES map artist in Washington, DC. One sentence in a letter my grandmother wrote to my father on Dec. 9, 1941 inspired me to tell their stories—“Why can’t the poor old earth just learn to exterminate war?”