I am saddened to hear that Oakhurst Dairy is no longer a Maine-owned company (“Maine’s Oakhurst Dairy sold to farmer cooperative,” Feb. 1). It has been a Maine staple for many, many years.

I will tell a story about when America cared.

It’s May 1945, and World War II was winding down. I was 5½ and had siblings: a sister, 3 years old, and a brother who was 16 months.

On that fateful day my mother got the dreaded telegram, informing her that her husband, my father, was missing in action in the South Pacific. His ship had been sunk, costing 158 American lives, my father one of them.

In June 1945, both my siblings contracted scarlet fever and the house was quarantined for six weeks. Nothing and nobody came out of the house, except the doctor checking us. The neighbors supplied our every need.

Now the rest of the story: As I said, nobody came out of the house, but we were never without dairy products. We got milk, eggs, cream, ice cream and all that a dairy could supply.

The quarantine lasted the full six weeks, and when it was lifted, I looked in the backyard and it was covered with empty milk bottles. The dairy could not take them back because of the quarantine.

Time passed, as time does, and my mother never received a bill for all the dairy products that were delivered to our house during that six-week quarantine period.

That company was Oakhurst Dairy. To this day, I have never failed them.

I wonder if that would happen today.

David S. Kaler

Bath