Who had a son who died in the war?
In August 2005, elderly Daisy Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Katrina approaches. She tells her daughter, Caroline, about a train station built in 1918 and the blind clockmaker, Mr. Gateau, who was hired to make a clock for it. When it was unveiled at the station, the public was surprised to see the clock running backwards. Mr. Gateau says he made it that way as a memorial, so that the boys they lost in the war, including his own son, could come home again and live full lives. Mr. Gateau was never seen again. Daisy then asks Caroline to read aloud from the diary of Benjamin Button.
On the evening of November 11, 1918, a boy is born with the appearance and maladies of an elderly man. After the baby's mother, Caroline, dies during childbirth, the father, Thomas Button, abandons the infant on the porch of a nursing home. Queenie and Mr. "Tizzy" Weathers find the baby, and Queenie decides to raise him as her own, naming him Benjamin.
Benjamin learns to walk in 1925, after which he uses crutches in place of a wheelchair. On Thanksgiving 1930, Benjamin meets seven-year-old Daisy, whose grandmother lives in the nursing home. He and Daisy become good friends. Later, he accepts work on a tugboat captained by Mike Clark. Benjamin also meets Thomas who does not reveal that he is Benjamin's father. In Autumn 1936, Benjamin leaves New Orleans for a long-term work engagement with the tugboat crew; Daisy later is accepted into a dance company in New York City under choreographer George Balanchine.
Mr. Gateau