Sunday, August 14, 2005 This has been a week of amazing emails full of support and good wishes and with them, the reminder that my father’s story is universal and important. Among them was a Press Release from JPAC. They send them frequently to announce the repatriation of a former MIA or the deployment of recovery teams all over the world. Mostly, I’ve read them with passing interest always believing that one day they the news would be about my father’s recovery. When a JPAC Press Release landed among all the words of encouragement in my email box this week, I nearly missed it. “Release No. 05-29 August 12, 2005. JPAC Teams Deploy to Europe Hickam, AFB, Hawaii - Two recovery teams and one investigative team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command will deploy this week from Hawaii to conduct operations in five European countries to search for or bring home remains of Americans still missing from World War II. The first recovery team will deploy to Germany to conduct recovery operations East of Torgau, Germany and North of Hanover, Germany at two sites. One site is associated with a 1945 loss of a P-38J aircraft, while another is associated with a 1944 loss of a P-51D aircraft.”
One sentence - a flat fact that carries with it the implications of war across time. Behind that sentence is the grief of a young widow, a mother, a father, a younger brother and sister, and a young daughter who would make it her business to bring her father home from the war. As a little girl, people would tell me I had pretty red hair or something and I’d always reply, “Thank you but my daddy died in the war.” Not only was it my claim to fame but I was proud of my father’s sacrifice and I had this fantasy that he would show up one day. I would wonder if my mother would choose her husband, my adopted daddy, or my father. When I’d actually be foolish enough to ask her who she would choose, she’d give me that “look” no amount of insistence would result in an answer. Still, I liked to think of us being scooped up by my father who would, of course, have a plane to fly us to our new life. The fact is, when I stood on the crash site for the first time and the evidence was pretty clear that this was where he died, my fantasy died that day. I’ve spoken to many men and women whose fathers never returned from WW II and they report the same hidden dreams that maybe their dads aren’t really dead. Not difficult to understand considering the absence of evidence for many of us.
In lieu of waiting for my father’s return, I’m bringing him home another way. I’m doing the best I can to complete the circle and to honor my role as the only daughter of an darling and amazing man. I know him mostly through his incredible funny, loving, playful, and poignant letters to my mother. He illustrated most of them and gave her frequent advice about how to manage the baby (me) when HE (Mike) arrived. He began writing to her when they were in high school religion class and wrote his last letter to her the day before he was killed. In all, there are 3,000 pages of correspondence. In that last letter he wrote: “As soon as the cable came about our daughter’s birth, I took her little shoe out of the celluloid frame and tied it to the back of my helmet. Have carried it in my jacket pocket since my 10th mission and on the helmet since the 28th (I have 34 now). That is the cutest little boot - I’d love to see her in a pair just like it. You just stole my heart completely and never returned it, a fact for which I am so thankful. Sweetie, I guess I just love you too much. All my love to you TWO! Gener.” As I do whatever I am assigned in my father’s field, I’ll be on the lookout for a little bootie. You never know. This is the stuff of miracles.
When I board that British Airways flight tomorrow night, I won’t be alone. There will be a group of people with me who will remain unseen but who have walked with me every step of this journey. My parents gave me wings and taught me how to fly - it’s a family tradition to be tenacious, inquisitive, and to take care of each other. In that spirit, I have included a picture of my parents taken around the time they were married June 26, 1943. Weren’t they cute?
FYI: Today, there is one American missing from the Gulf War, more than 1,800 from the Vietnam War, 120 from the Cold War, more than 8,100 from the Korean War, and more than 78,000 from World War II.