KID SISTER FOLLOWS BROTHER ONCE MORE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

She was the pesky kid sister who followed her older brother everywhere growing up. Except to war.

The kid sister who was home alone with a cold on the holiest Jewish night of the year when the telegraph from the president of the United States arrived at her parents' Upper Westside home in New York in 1944.

Sue Rubin was only 17, but she knew what the words were going to say. She didn't need to read them to start crying.

She waited until her parents came home from Yom Kippur services, then she handed the telegraph to her father, while she watched her mother's shoulders sag.

``We regret to inform you...,'' Bernard Coleman began to read in a daze, as his daughter put her arm around her mother, Martha, and they both began to cry.

A son, a big brother - Seymour Coleman, an infantryman with the 7th Army in France - had died for his country in battle. He was 21.

It's been there in the back of her mind for the last 60 years - growing stronger as she gets older, Sue Rubin says. This nagging feeling of unfinished business - of one more trip the pesky kid sister had to make to follow the big brother she loved.

She had moved on with her life after the war - moved to California, gotten married, divorced, had children and grandchildren. Started a few careers, including her present one for the last nine years as minister of the Westlake Church of Religious Science in Westlake Village.

Her big brother had none of these opportunities. He's been frozen forever at 21, buried in a small military cemetery in southern France no one in her family has ever visited.

His kid sister turned 77 this year. It was time for a visit.

The train ride from Cannes to the little town of Arc Draguignan took about 45 minutes.

Sue knocked on the door of the little cottage at the entrance of the American Rhone Cemetery, where 850 GIs killed in action during World War II are buried.

A young man named Michael - she never learned his last name - opened the door with a surprised look on his face. Sue was the first American he had seen in many months asking to visit one of the grave sites, he told her.

Michael was a civilian working for the American Battle Monuments Commission, which oversees cemeteries around the world where American veterans are buried.

``He was from Dayton, Ohio,'' Sue said. ``He and his wife wanted their children to spend a few years learning another culture and language, besides English.''

But maintaining their young children's ability to speak English fluently was important enough for Michael's wife to drive their children every day to the closest international school 80 miles away - one way.

That's where she was now, Michael told Sue, as he filled up a bucket with gravelly sand and a little water before showing her the way to her brother's grave site.

``We walked through beautiful olive groves, past rows and rows of marble headstones with either crosses or the Star of David on them. My brother's was at the start of a new row - Plot C, Row I, Grave 20.

``Seymour I. Coleman - PVT 15th Inf. 3 Div - NY, Aug 28, 1944,'' the headstone read. Name, rank, unit he served in, place of birth, date of death.

Michael stirred the bucket of sand and water, and spread the sand on the white marble headstone to bring out the letters so Sue could take pictures. He also found her a stone to place at the grave site, a Jewish tradition to show someone had come to visit.

``Then he stuck a small American flag on a stake in the ground, and told me to take it home with me when I left because the moisture from the ground would leave earth stains on the stake.

``He said I would always have a little of the soil where my brother is buried. I keep the flag on the stand next to my bed.''

When he was sure she had everything she needed, Michael left Sue alone at the grave site, telling her to take as much time as she needed. The cemetery was hers. She was the only one there.

``I said a prayer first, then I sat down on the grass and started talking to him like he was there,'' Sue said. ``Telling him what had been going on for the last 60 years.''

Seymour's pesky kid sister told her big brother how their mother had died of cancer in 1948. Cancer and heartache.

She told him how tough a decision it was for their parents to decide not to bring his body home because the doctors didn't think Martha could make it through a funeral. She was that sick.

She told him how their father died in 1985, a few years after moving to California to be closer to Sue and her children at the end.

She told him all about her life - the good times and the bad.

But most of all she talked about him, and how he was the best big brother a kid sister ever had.

It was 5 p.m. by the time Sue finished saying goodbye to Seymour. She had been sitting on the grass talking to him for more than three hours.

Mike was out in front of the cemetery, lowering the American flag for the night. His car was parked at the flagpole, the motor running. He had already checked to see what time the last train back to Cannes left Arc Draguignan.

``We've got half an hour, hop in,'' said the cemetery caretaker for 850 American GI's buried in France - driving Pvt. Seymour Coleman's kid sister to the train station.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Sue Rubin shows a photograph of her late brother Seymour Coleman and the flag that had been placed next to his grave in France. Rubin visited the fallen World War II soldier's grave for the first time recently.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer