101st Airborne - 502nd PIR - PFC John Webb

The new article in the Providence Journal was published on March 28th, 2002 :

Note :
The writing committee of the Providence Journal selected Richard's second story about the search (te one published here above) as their paper's local story of the week.
Congratulations, Richard !

48 hours after the request to the City Hall of East Providence we knew quite a lot about John Francis Webb but it wasn't finished !

On March 29th, Richard received a mail from Mrs. Carolyn Mc Grath and this was also a great gift and a wonderful help for us. The icing on the cake ...

Hi, Richard -

I'm a genealogist and the thrill of the search for someone else's family is not much less than the thrill of searching for one's own.

So, I had a few hours available today and this is what I found:

John Francis Webb was born 14 Dec. 1923 at Lying In Hospital in Providence to James Francis Webb and Theresa Victoria Clifford; the family was living in East Providence at the time of John's birth. Father James was 27, mother Theresa was 26. I have a copy of his birth certificate for Monsieur Lamy.

John's father, born 7 Dec. 1896 in Rhode Island, was the son of ...

[...]

Though I don't have any personal memories of John Webb to share, I hope that this info will still help.

Carolyn Mc Grath, M.D.

Carolyn Mc Grath did a wonderful job and does continue to do it. Not only she found and sent a lot of information, but she went to different places in East Providence, took pictures of John's residences, where John worked before to enter the army, sent a book about East Providence to Jules Lamy, sent copies of official documents (act of birth, of decease, ...), completed our information, etc... etc... She felt as involved and became a most valuable member of the "Webb Research Team". What she did is resumed on this site under "The Carolyn Mc Grath Report".

How will we be able to thank all those people who helped us ? At a certain moment we had the feeling that all East Providence was looking after John Francis Webb and his possible still living relatives. This was at the same time a great fear and a great joy.

At this moment, April 11th, 2002 - 03.00 PM, we could not find any living relative but Carolyn was getting closer and closer to grandchildren or great-grandchildren of John's uncle who could be alive. Let's hope she will succeed. If so, the results will be published into the Carolyn Mc Grath Report's pages. Perhaps we can find other pictures of John when he was young and at the army.

To conclude these pages about how it started and that told you about the unbelievable solidarity that Richard Dujardin put on wheels, we will say, starting with the Ladies :

Thank you Carolyn

Thank you Richard

Thank you good people of East Providence

God bless you all

Those virtual flowers are for you

pic_flowers.jpg (23799 bytes)

and we do not want to forget either:

Thank you once again John
for helping our country

and

Thank you Mr. & Mrs. Webb-Clifford
for the sacrifice of your son
Jules Lamy will take care of John's grave for you

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