Veteran honors soldiers who never returned with new book

A Navy veteran has spent a decade honoring U.S. soldiers who never made it back home.

Richard Sherman’s new book, “Never Home,” remembers the military heroes who never returned and shares their powerful stories.

The Estero resident traveled to eight different countries, 17 of the 26 American overseas cemeteries, all to tell the stories of those who are no longer here to tell their own.

“They all deserve to have their stories told,” Sherman said.

As a Navy veteran, Sherman told us we always hear about numbers, numbers of how many people lost their lives, but he wanted to get their faces, stories and names out, so he grabbed his notebook, camera and plane ticket and traveled for six years.

Looking at friends and families face to face, listening to any and all memories they have of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

“Lucy Melvin, her father was a brigadier general who is interred in Eponine, to hear her stories of her father. The little memories she had as a young child or the Tester brothers. Frank Tester lives in Modesto, California. He’s 80 years old. His father, Glen, was one of three brothers who died in three consecutive years and are buried in Henri-Chapelle Cemetery overseas,” Sherman said.

Sherman highlights dozens of those who served and couldn’t come home. He said he hopes his book never comes home and sends one message to people.

“Let’s just try to remember some of these folks because they were real individuals, and they loved people, and they wanted to come home, and they had boyfriends and girlfriends and fathers and brothers and sons and sisters they wanted to come home to,” Sherman said.

Sherman said the hardest part of this mission was to stop.

He said he’s grateful to highlight nearly 50 people but knows there are so many more stories that need to be told.