Danny Jameson, 97, left us last week.

He meant a great deal to my family, although it is hard to explain the relationship.

He was a quiet man, the opposite of a loud guy who shared his opinions with all. Just because he was soft-spoken, don’t think Danny was shy.

In the frozen hills of Korea, Lt. Dan led a platoon of Army soldiers while dodging bullets from the waves of Chinese infantry that swarmed down to help the North Korean army. His service earned him a Bronze Star with a Combat V. The Army does not award that medal because he was a nice guy.

He worked hard to provide for his family. He loved his wife Shirley and missed her terribly when she passed. He was a believer and looked forward to joining her in the afterlife.

In 2004 when we retired, my bride, Susan Stevens Gelarden, told me she was moving back to East Boothbay, and I was welcome to join her. I took the hint.

Danny and Shirley were among the first to welcome us. Susan explained they were, well, sort of family. Her mother, Eleanor Andrews Stevens, spent part of her high school years living with Danny's family in Melrose, Massachusetts.

Once, while at dinner, Danny gave Susan a large blue porcelain platter housed in a stout oak frame. They said it was a family treasure, a gift from Queen Victoria. It was supposed to go to the family’s eldest daughter, and Danny said the family deemed that it should go to Susan.

Wait a minute, I asked. What did Danny and his family have to do with Queen Victoria?

And Danny smiled and said it had to do with his great, great grandmother, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, one of the most accomplished women of her generation.

Of course, I had no idea who she was, and why Danny deemed her important. We thanked him, brought the platter home, and hung it on the dining room wall. From time to time, my bride would “suggest” that I research the story of Mary Livermore.

When I did, her list of accomplishments dazzled me.

She was a journalist, the only woman reporter allowed on the floor of The Wigwam, a Chicago building that housed the Republican convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln.

During the Civil War, she was a leader in the Chicago branch of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. It provided food, supplies, and nurses to Gen. U.S. Grant's western army as it fought down the Mississippi.

In the days before we had a national Veterans Administration, she helped run a Chicago fair that raised $80,000 (equal to $3 million in today's dollars) to aid wounded veterans.

As part of that effort, she talked President Lincoln into donating his copy of the Emancipation Proclamation to her cause. It was auctioned off for $3,000, donated to the city’s soldiers' home, and later lost in the great Chicago Fire.

After the war, she ran a series of newspapers, one called “The Agitator,” which proclaimed that women's suffrage was a natural right, arguing society owed a debt to women, should encourage their education, and permit them to enter the professions.

In 1886, she joined with other women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to pressure the Illinois legislature to give women control over their finances.

Later, she moved to Boston, where her paper, now named The Women’s Journal, became the voice of Lucy Stone’s American Womens Suffrage Association, known for advocating for the adoption of the 14th and 15th Constitutional Amendments.

For the next 30 years, she toured the nation as a lecturer on women's suffrage and moral values, earning praise from the New York Times as one of the most popular speakers on the lyceum circuit. Danny Jameson said Queen Victoria gave her the platter at a lecture stop in England.

In 1919, Mary Livermore's granddaughter, Mary Barrows, and her husband, Malcolm, bought a farmhouse and 40 acres on Linekin Bay founding the Laughing Water Camp for Boys. It is now Linekin Bay Resort.

After Danny and Shirley retired, they moved to the Barrows Road farmhouse and later to St. Andrews Village. Danny played golf and sang in a barbershop quartet. Shirley continued to study the violin with Ferdinand “Dino” Liva, a founder of the Da Ponte String Quartet.

After my bride passed on, I took the Queen Victoria platter off the wall and returned it to Danny Jameson, who passed it down to his family to continue the tradition of honoring the legacy of one of America's pioneers of women’s suffrage and civil rights.

Oct. 14, St. Columba’s church will host a funeral service for Danny.

I plan to attend. After all, he was family, well sort of.