Word: lillyman
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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Through the months of mud and misery, all of them dreamed elaborate dreams of the pleasures of peace. To 30-year-old Frank Lillyman, a captain in the 101st Airborne Division, the dreams became obsessions. On Christmas Day at Bastogne, he hunched over in the icy rain to scribble his dreams on paper. As he moved with the 101st across Germany, he kept adding to the list. It finally included every detail of a soldier's vision of heaven...
...Lillyman, thrice wounded and eight times decorated, heaven was worth a try. When he learned two months ago that he would soon be going home, he wrote to Manhattan's Hotel Pennsylvania his order for a seven-day dream: "A suite that will face east ... a cup of English-made tea served to me in bed ... no military title -'Mister' will be music to my ears. . . ." A phonograph "with any & all Strauss selections," a "large, grey-haired, motherly" maid to look after his three-year-old daughter Susie, a new toy for Susie every day, flowers every...
Wistful Captain Lillyman finally started home. Still determined, he turned up at the hotel, pulled out $500 in money saved for the dream, asked if it was enough. The management told him to put it away, go up to Skaneateles, N.Y. and get his wife and daughter. The party was on the house...
Last week, while the hotel staff turned itself inside out (and the public-relations man made hay with the story), Mister Lillyman, Jane and Susie lived his dream down to its minutest detail (a Maraschino cherry on top of each scoop of ice cream in their triple-scoop banana splits). Lillyman and Susie took it in their stride (see cut), but it was almost too much for Mrs. Lillyman. Said she: "He's always been a champagne dreamer...
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