The Biography of a Rabbit

Introduction This is the story of a young man, my uncle Bunny , growing up in Canandaigua, New York, including his joining the Army, training to fly, and flying a P51 on missions over Germany. He was ultimately shot down, taken prisoner and liberated about a year later. The story concludes with clips from his return to a normal life back in Canandaigua. Bunny knew that he had Colon and liver cancer when he he decided to write this book and he died shortly after its completion. I hope the story will be of interest to other students of history. Roy (Bunny) Benson was my mother's youngest brother. – Burr Cook
Chapter 1 Background
My father, Roy Benson, was born in 1879 in Centerfield, New York, and my mother, Frances Lorraine Gulvin, was born in 1880 in Sittingbourne, England which is about fifty miles southeast of London. Sittingbourne is approximately thirty miles from Rochester, England. She came to the United States with her parents when she was three years old and settled on a farm in Seneca Castle (which is thirty miles from Rochester, New York).
When my father was courting my mother he would walk to Canandaigua from Centerfield and rent a horse and buggy from a livery stable on the corner of Chapin and Main Streets. He would then drive to Seneca Castle, a distance of some ten miles, to see her. on the way home, late at night, he would sleep in the buggy and the horse would find its own way back to the livery. He would awaken when the buggy rolled to a stop, then walk back to Centerfield.
They were married in 1901 and went to one of the beaches in Rochester for a honeymoon (perhaps Charlotte). At that time such a trip was an all day affair. They traveled from Canandaigua on the trolley that ran all the way to the beach and carried their picnic lunch, I was told. After their marriage, my parents made their first home in a house on the corner of Bristol and Mason Streets. In 1903 their first child, Clarence was born. A few years later they moved to a farm on Route 5 and 20 about one and a half miles from Canandaigua. My father worked for a painting contractor in Canandaigua at the time and Clarence has told me that Dad used to ride a bicycle to work, wearing a derby hat and carrying his paint buckets on the handle bars. there was a big oak tree on the road, about half way from home to town and the children would walk as far as the tree and wait there each day for my father to come home from work. They would all then walk on home together.