He was 17 when he landed on Omaha Beach. His story lives on

Sometimes the best stories just find you when you're in the right place at the right time.

During our recent D-Day tour through Europe, I met morning-show listener Chris Cahill. As our group visited the ground where Americans fought to liberate Europe, Chris told me about her Uncle Joe.

A 17-year-old landed in the first wave at Omaha Beach

Joseph Leo Argenzio was only 17 when he entered the Army.

On June 6, 1944, he landed in the first wave at Omaha Beach with the 16th Infantry Regiment of the legendary 1st Infantry Division, the “Big Red One.”

Men directly in front of him were killed by German machine-gun fire as the landing craft opened.

Joe went over the side, losing his helmet and ammunition in the water, and somehow made it onto the beach.

D-Day was only the beginning.

He continued fighting through Normandy, Aachen, the Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, eventually reaching Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Chris made sure his uncle's story didn't disappear

After our trip, Chris followed up. She sent me two extensive files containing a transcript of Joe’s oral history and other family material.

She also sent links to interviews preserved by the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.

Listening to Joe recount the experience decades later, you can still hear its emotional weight.

That is something a casualty number or history-book paragraph can never communicate.

Many of these men who left home to fight for their country were still teenagers, young men placed in circumstances most of us can barely comprehend.

They were frightened, exhausted and surrounded by death, yet they overcame their fear and they kept moving forward despite what seemed like impossible odds.

Joe died in 2010, but Chris has made sure her uncle’s story did not disappear with him.

That matters.

World War II is moving from living memory into history, and every year fewer veterans remain to tell us what they saw, did and sacrificed.

This is why recording family history is so important.

Ask the questions, preserve the photographs and letters, record the stories while parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are still here to tell them.

Because Chris took the time to share the story, thousands more people can know the name Joseph Leo Argenzio and remember the 17-year-old American who stepped onto Omaha Beach when his country needed him.