Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

I never had the pleasure of meeting Tech Sergeant John Chapman or his brave mother, who was featured in a short video , a loving remembrance of her son, sometime after the country graced itself by awarding to Chapman the Medal of Honor.   We do however share a town: Windsor Locks, a mill town with a characteristic one-sided Main Street, a canal that flows parallel to the Connecticut River, full of perch and snappers in the heat of July. Chapman’s mother says in the video her son was a little Huck-Finnish growing up in Windsor Locks – nothing too serious, but there was a playful and sometimes mischievous spirit in the recent Medal of Honor recipient. When you live by a sun-spangled river and you are a boy in a town in which all eyes lovingly spy you out, Huck lives and breathes in you.