I barely knew him so this post by my mother brought tears to my eyes. I won't have much to add and I really think anybody interested should follow the link and perhaps even read some more of her stuff. She's brilliant. OK, a bit more from me at the end.
My brother Shelty, 15 years my elder, was a legend, to his family at least, before he was 20. He went off to war in 1944, a few weeks after our mother died of liver cancer; came back bearing a Nazi helmet and an SS dagger with an ivory hilt; and soon after that disappeared to Wyoming, where he studied animal husbandry (who knew what that was?) under the GI Bill at the university in Laramie instead of going to Princeton and entering his father’s firm on Wall Street. After graduation from high school, Dad had sent him to work on a friend’s ranch until he was called up, and from then on he renounced the East and all its conventions.