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Excerpt:

Five Bay Area women whose sons or daughters or husbands risked their lives for the country are doing their best to keep that music alive. Dubbed the Swingin' Blue Stars of the USS Hornet, they specialize in performing songs from the '40s and '50s, often before audiences who lived through the good and bad from those times.

"It has such an effect on them," said group member Cindy Moreno, 53, of Pleasanton, whose father was a Marine in the Korean War. "Most people know every single word and will sing along with us."