A Dream He Never Spoke Out Loud
Like most men and women who experience combat, my father never talked about his service across three wars. I didn’t even know he had been a POW during the Korean War until much later in my life.
Whenever I called my sister, I’d ask how our parents were doing. One day she told me they were fine but getting older. Then she added it was a shame Dad had never fulfilled his lifelong dream.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
She explained that he had always wanted to write the story of what he and his fellow prisoners of war endured in those Korean War prison camps. He had never mentioned it to me. But my sister was older, and she knew he had left school in the 6th grade to help his family survive the Great Depression. He was certain no one would accept him as the author of his own story.
A Race Against Time
My father had been misdiagnosed, and his cancer was killing him.
Thanks to him, and the GI Bill, I had the education he had only ever dreamed of. My sister shipped me boxes of his handwritten notes, newspaper clippings, photographs, and letters. Everything he and my mother had saved over a lifetime.
Going through it all, I realized there was enough to tell his story if we could work together to fill in the gaps. I spent two and a half years researching, reconstructing events in chronological order, and asking my father question after question. I read old newspapers, congressional records, and the letters he’d kept for decades.
I meant to surprise him. So I never came right out and told him what I was doing. What I didn’t realize until later was that he had known all along. He was dictating his story to me and I was the only one in the room who didn’t know we were collaborating.
The Manuscript in His Hands
I will never forget the day I placed the finished manuscript in my father’s hands.
The look on his face made every hour worth it. My sister said it gave him a new reason to live. He got out of his sickbed and traveled all over Northern California, showing off that rough manuscript to anyone who would listen.
I thought my work was done. But his cancer kept spreading. On one of what would turn out to be my last visits, I told my sister I didn’t know what to do with him now that the book was finished and he was bedridden again. She said he’d love nothing more than if I simply sat beside him and read it to him.
“He hasn’t read it yet?”
Too Moved to Finish the Page
She explained: every time he tried to read it, the emotion overtook him and he had to put it down.
I knew then that we had gotten the story right.
He passed away the day before I could make that trip.