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“knowing” things. The first time Anne ever had the Sight
     was in the summer of 1938 when Hugh was in summer camp and GH was on maneuvers at Fort Dix.
     When the phone rang, Mrs. McCaffrey exclaimed, “Something’s happened to GH.”
    â€œNo, it’s Hugh,” Anne replied. It was. He’d been rushed to the hospital with a dangerously
     inflamed appendix.

    Anne with brothers Kevin and Hugh, and mother Anne, January 1942
    Between the Depression and the Second World War, a major family tragedy befell the McCaffreys. Anne’s younger brother, Kevin, came down with an undiagnosed ailment. He began a long series of hospitalizations as doctors tried to diagnose the ailment. When they finally did, the news was the worst — it was osteomyelitis, an incurable infection of the bone marrow.
    No one knew if Kevie was going to live or die. GH turned down an active duty commission as a colonel in the infantry as the US Army grew in preparation for war. Mrs. McCaffrey stayed with Kevin at the hospital and Anne was sent to Stuart Hall school for girls. It had been established in 1844 as the Virginia Female Institute but was renamed in 1907 in honor of Headmistress Flora Cooke Stuart — J.E.B. Stuart’s widow. Stuart Hall was an excellent choice for the daughter of a military man.
    Before that, Anne was to experience something that would stick in her memory forever and influence all her future writing. She recalls:
    â€œMother was a constant companion and nurse for him but the months when she didn’t know what Keve had, had drained her of energy. One night she asked me to sit up with Keve so that she could have a full night’s sleep. I was to wake her if Keve was too restless — the drugs sometimes had that affect.
    â€œI couldn’t have been more than thirteen for it was May. I was rather ‘puffed up’ to think
     that I could be allowed to help.
    â€œIt was a weird night … with Keve climbing endless mountains in his sleep with his hands, and throwing his head from side to side. His swollen leg was secured so that he couldn’t injure it.
    â€œThen, fighting sleep, I remember praying to keep awake. I was grateful when the early
     morning light seeped through the curtains. The curtains stirred - and suddenly I felt a
     ’something’ — and Keve stopped his restless movements and fell deeply asleep. So
     deeply, at first, that I thought he had stopped breathing although I knew that he was all
     right. The ’something’ had reassured me about that.
    â€œLater that day when the doctor came, he said that the crisis he had been waiting for had
     passed and Keve would be all right now. But I knew already, the ’something’ had told
     me.”
    The ’something’ pervades her writing — never quite visible but always present. And
     always her style lets us know that no matter what the dangers, ’something’ will be watching
     over the characters in Anne’s books, and they’ll always make it through to the end.
    Kevin was very brave throughout his ordeal. Once, when he was being moved to a different hospital, the ambulance men hustled him back inside because a hearse was driving by. Kevin — who couldn’t have been more than twelve — told them, “Never mind, I’ll be there soon enough.”
    Years later, Anne was to honor his bravery in
The Smallest Dragonboy
— a story that has become her most published short story.
    Anne’s stint at Stuart Hall was set in motion on December 7th, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. She had been out riding — her mother had gifted her with the use of a horse for the whole month — and passing motorists had shouted out the news of the attack. She rushed home to find her father and mother listening grim-faced to the radio reports of the attack. GH immediately phoned Army Headquarters in New York and told them that he would serve in