Harvey Oliver was a friendly boy who loved people and was interested in many things. He moved to Brandon from Connecticut in 1937, as a 12-year-old, when his father became the new vocational agriculture teacher at Brandon High School. The Olivers soon became heavily involved in Brandon life. Harvey, their only child, seems to have joined in at everything he could, and to always have tried his best.

By the time he was in high school, the list of his activities was extensive. He acted in a play, took part in a debate, and was the assistant editor of the school paper. One summer he took classes at the Rutland Business College. His primary interests, however, were music and the outdoors. He not only played the trombone but also had a beautiful bass voice – he was all-state in chorus – and appears to have sung whenever he got the chance: in the school chorus, the school operetta, in local private recitals and at pageants and services at the Brandon Congregational Church, where he was a very active youth member.

He was outside all the time, too. He was a longtime Boy Scout who took part in many scout activities. He was a member of his father’s Future Farmers of America club at the high school and hiked parts of the Long Trail with both groups. He was also an excellent skier. He captained the Brandon High ski team, once won the slalom and downhill in a single meet, volunteered at the Brandon ski area, and was a member of the ski patrol (he learned first aid, too). He volunteered a lot.

He had many friends. His senior year, 1942-1943, his father got another job and his family moved to Fairlee, where his mother was from. He came back to Brandon for his class’s graduation and to see everyone. He himself graduated from the Clark School in Hanover. Deferring his admission to Yale, he joined the army in October 1943.

The army moved fast with new recruits at that point in the war. In March 1944 he took a leave at home after basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama. He was to be shipped out from Camp Meade, Maryland. On the way there his mother traveled with him as far as New York City before saying goodbye. In April he went overseas, arriving first in England. By his birthday, July 17, he was in Normandy with the 41st Armored Infantry of the Second Armored Division. He was wounded for the first time on Oct. 6 and spent part of his recovery in Paris.

Through it all he wrote to his parents regularly. He was close to them. When, after fighting through France, the Americans arrived in Belgium, he wrote a proud letter home about the joyous welcome they received.

He went back to his unit on Dec. 2. On Christmas Eve, 1944, he was wounded again, this time during the horrible, freezing cold, desperate fighting of the Battle of the Bulge. Someone sent a telegram to his parents from the hospital saying that he was “lightly” wounded, but they were wrong. He died later in the day. He was 19.

A few weeks before he died, he had written a long letter home describing in detail a memorial service he had attended for dead comrades. It had moved him deeply. His parents replicated it at a memorial service they held for him in Fairlee. Many, many people came to “the largest and most impressive service ever witnessed in town,” the Barre Daily Times wrote. He is buried in Belgium, where his parents decided to leave him among the young men he had mourned.

In March they unexpectedly received the Christmas presents their sweet, loving boy had mailed them from Paris.