By Rick Steelhammer, Charleston Gazette-Mail
FLATWOODS, W.Va. — Christmas, the season of perpetual hope, was three months distant when Hoy M. Young Jr.’s home caught fire and burned to the ground.
While hope might have been a hard sell for Young at the time, hands and hearts were already joining forces to lighten the U.S. Marine Corps veteran’s burden.
Young managed to escape the Sept. 22 fire with his life and little more than a lungful of smoke.
“For a week after the fire, I was kind of hoarse,” he said.
A native of Fayette County and a former resident of Charleston, Young enlisted in the Marine Corps in the early 1970s, as the United States was beginning to wind down its military presence in Vietnam.
“I’ve always loved my country,” he said. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
Young spent eight years in the Corps, part of it overseas and the latter part at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia…