Just finished viewing Journey To Royal at The Strand in Zelie and can't say enough good things about it!  Your passion, perseverance, and commitment to letting the vets and their families tell their stories touches all of us.  It is such a well done film with the close-up interviews of the veterans, the well-cast actors and their portrayals, actual WWII planes used, and the WWII film footage intermixed.

 

Any Western Pennsylvanian will feel a special kinship since the hero Royal Stratton was from Ellwood City. I now live in Zelienople, worked in Ellwood City for a decade, have friends who live in Ellwood, and a son who lives nearby in Wampum.  We need these stories told, and we're so blessed to have people like you to make sure they get told.

 

My connection to WWII is not as strong and poignant as those of your family, Christopher, or the other veterans represented in the film.  My father wasn't 18 until 1944 and so enlisted late in the war.  He was 1 of 30 out of his battalion (300 soldiers, I think) that did NOT get sent to the European Theater.  I ponder at times that if he were sent, there's a good chance I may never have existed...God's Amazing Grace!

 

Sincerely,

Les Graves