Letters of Hero Dad Compiled by Child, 6

The following news article and photo appeared in the Brooklyn Section  - Sunday News, November 18, 1951.   I found this with the things my parents saved. 

            "Taking time from play with her dolls and other toys, pretty 6-year-old Sharon O'Donnell is busy compiling a very special book of letters.  It is very special to the blue-eyed brown-haired little girl because they are from her daddy, Lt. Joseph T. O'Donnell, who was killed in Korea Oct. 13.
            In her book of memories, too, will be pictures of her father and the citation for "conspicuously meritorious and outstanding performance of military duty" that accompanied the Bronze Star he received for action in Germany during World War II.
                                      Mother, Sister Help.
             Helping young Sharon in her self-appointed task is her mother, slender Mrs. Marie O'Donnell.  Also "helping" are the little fingers of her three-year-old sister, Diane.
              Among the letters specially prized by the bereaved family who live at 73 Linden St., Brooklyn is one from Japan last September to the two girls.   Their father wrote it on the ever of "going on a train ride" that started his trip to Korea.
               He carefully illustrated the sentence with little sketches that gave his daughters a visual idea of life in Japan and the Japanese people.
                                     In Action 2 Days.
He told in words and sketches how the women, in kimonos, carry their babies on their backs; how the farmers lug pails slung on their shoulders and walk "like a rocker" in flat sandals with wooden stilts.
He also promised the girls he would "write again like this if you like it." 
                 Mrs. O'Donnell was notified on Nov. 6 of her husband's death.  So far as she can determine from his last letter, dated Oct. 10, in which he said they had "orders now to push off on the attack tomorrow morning, " he was killed two days after going into action.
                O'Donnell, who worked in a bank, enlisted in the Army in 1942.  He served in Europe with the 82nd Airborne for 16 months without injury.  After separation from the Army in March 1945, he was in the Reserves and on Nov. 11, 1950 was called back to duty.  He flew to Japan in September.
                Knowing that Sharon was a bit worried about Santa Claus this year, O'Donnell wrote his wife from Japan on Sept. 13 to "Tell Sharon Santa Claus will come to Diane and to her, too.  She can have anything she wants."