One night last August, Bethany Glenn stood on a tarmac in Colorado Springs, waiting for a plane. Around her neck, she wore a picture of her grandfather, John Charles England.
The photo was a black-and-white portrait of England in his Navy ensign’s uniform. Glenn had found it in a box of her great-grandmother’s belongings, and she’d started wearing it from time to time when she wanted to feel closer to her grandfather, a feeling that had brought her to the airport that night.
Glenn didn’t know her grandfather personally; she never had the chance. He died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. England had been on the U.S.S. Oklahoma, and he disappeared while returning to the sinking ship