Paul Camyre Touched America's Heart With Financial Trouble
Two weeks ago Paul Camyre was behind on bills, then a nation responded.
Oct. 2, 2008 — -- Two weeks ago on the "Good Morning America" Whistle-Stop '08 Tour, 89-year-old Paul Camyre from Palmer, Mass., emotionally told the "GMA" anchors about his financial hardship.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," he said.
An honest and proud man, Camyre did not want to steal America's heart that day, but that's what he did. The national outpouring was overwhelming.
Click here to see what you can do to lend Camyre a hand.
After lighting up the "GMA" message boards with queries about how to get in touch with Camyre, "GMA" viewers sent him cards, love and money -- several thousand dollars. But no one was more taken aback than his family, who had no idea he was behind in the bills.
"He told none of us," Paul Camyre Jr. said. "He's a proud man. He wanted to do this on his own but he couldn't."
After 89 years, the elder Camyre's latest struggle with finances is far from his first battle.
During World War II, Camyre served as a combat engineer. Building military roads did not keep him out of the line of fire, however, and he was close enough to fighting at Guadalcanal that he had to dodge sniper fire.
He married his sweetheart Junie while on furlough during the war, but then tragedy struck. In the winter of 1944 Camyre was summoned home.
"My father and a friend of his -- my father didn't want to face me alone to tell me my wife had passed away," Camyre said. "We were married two months and 20 days."
Junie had died of a heart ailment.
Camyre's granddaughter Melissa King remembered hearing the heartbreaking story.
"He told us this one story about how, after Junie died, he was crying on the dock and crying and crying and this woman came up to him. She said 'What are you going to cry for? You've got to move on.' So that's what he did."
The grief of Junie's death was hard on him and her family. For Junie's sister Betty, times got even tougher when she lost her boyfriend in the war.
But then a silver lining -- Betty and Camyre fell in love. They married in 1946 and raised four children, Paul, Mary, Peter and Liz.
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