Edmund Burke O'Connell

    My late stepfather, co-author, Edmund Burke O’Connell served as an Army newsreel cameraman in 3131 Signal Service Company which was reorganized to form the 196th Signal Photo Company in the North African, Naples-Foggia, Northern Apennines, Po Valley and Rome Arno Italian campaigns of World War II.

    Publication of The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart honors a promise I made to Burke to help him share this very personal, heartfelt memoir in his own words.

    Edmund Burke O'Connell came into my life in 1971 when he married my mother Jan Whitman in 1972. My brother Jef and I moved with our parents to Livorno, Italy in mid-1972  where I spent my junior year of high school at Livorno-American High School near Pisa.  We were off on a wonderful adventure as my new stepfather introduced our family to the beauty of Italy where his own personal love story with Tina Calamai first began.

    To a wonderful man, to the stepfather who became a friend, I dedicate The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart to you.

       Burke wrote the original manuscript for The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart in his office studio in Santa Monica, California in 1975, when after our family returned from our 1972-73 residence in Livorno, Italy.

    In his later years, Burke became active as an actor in the Valley Players Guild, taught gourmet cooking classes, painted oils, and forever embraced the richness of Italian culture in everything he ever touched.

    He died at the age of 74 in 1988 and is buried at the Los Angeles National Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

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