Clifton Joseph Cate was born in Dover, New Hampshire, on October 2,1898. In 1917, after graduating from high school in Sharon, Massachusetts, he served briefly in the U.S. Army until his unexpected medical discharge. Undeterred, he left for Canada where he joined--and for the next 20 months served--as a gunner in that nation's army. Returning to the United States, he spent the boom and bust years between the first and second world wars rearing a family and working at several occupations, but always remaining loosely attached to military life, working his way through the ranks until commissioned as a lieutenant in the National Guard. WW II saw him back in active service, where he achieved the rank of Lt. Colonel. After the war, he became the proprietor of a hardware store in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts until his retirement in 1960. Moving closer to his ancestral home in South Effingham, New Hampshire, he became actively engaged in local community affairs, serving as town clerk and as volunteer fireman, policeman and ambulance driver until his death in 1973.
Charles Cameron Cate was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on October 19, 1934, named after two of his father's closest comrades, thus representing three-fourths of the tight group known in the narrative as the "Big 4." He first observed military life during WW-II, in Alabama, where his father was stationed while training infantry replacement troops for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Toward the end of the Korean War, after a too brief flirtation with college he opted out of the Army Reserves and entered active duty, serving in the Military Police from 1953 to 1956, first stateside and then in Italy, Austria, and Berlin, Germany.He left the service and eventually completed his interrupted education attending the University of Massachusetts, and West Virginia University, and enjoyed a career in the biomedical research communities at Dartmouth Medical School, and at the nearby VA Hospital in White River Junction, Vermont. Retired, he now lives with his wife by the sea on the coast of Maine.
