On a hot July afternoon in 1968, two families gathered for a picnic at 55 Linden St. in Wethersfield.

PFC Richard Paul Caputo, 20, was leaving for Vietnam. Drafted the previous December, he had married his childhood sweetheart, Ann Gesauldi, four months earlier. On this particular day, the mood was somber, not boisterous.

"He was leaving, and not to a good place,'' Ann said. Rich, as he was known, did his best to cheer everyone up. "I was crazy,'' recalled Ann's mother, Joyce, now 91 and still living in the house her husband and his brother built in the 1940s. Her new son-in-law tried comforting her. "Don't cry, Ma. I'll be home in no time. I'll be back," he told her. 

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Source: http://www.courant.com