Visit The Boston Globe Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Comment on this Scroll to top of page Thomas Farragher Globe Columnist June 22, 2018 WATERTOWN — Handsome, smiling and ramrod straight, Paul Sullivan — dressed in crisp military uniform — stares out from a framed photo that freezes him in time. He’s 24 years old. He’s newly married. His life stretches toward a bright horizon. He’s forever young. It’s a beloved image enshrined on the living room wall in the home here of his sister that also holds the battlefield medals the Army Ranger earned fighting and dying for his country. Advertisement That was 50 summers ago. A half of a century. Enough time for a freckle-faced boy to mature into the gray hair that accompanies middle age. Get Fast Forward in your inbox: Forget yesterday’s news. Get what you need today in this early-morning email. Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here It was the summer of 1968, the summer of a national nervous breakdown, one of the most tumultuous times in modern American history that held echoes of political assassinations, urban riots, and a war in a faraway place in Southeast Asia called Vietnam, where Lieutenant Paul J. Sullivan was settling into life under the canopy of the jungle. “I’m real glad and proud to be over here,’’ he wrote to his family on July 8, 1968, one month and one day before he was killed. “So don’t even agree with anyone when… [Read full story]
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