Love, Bill: Finding My Father Through Letters from World War Ii (New Edition)

By Jan Krulick-Belin

Long before becoming a museum curator, author Jan Krulick-Belin curated memories, photographs, and mementos of her father who died when she was just six. Her mother rarely spoke about him again, until a year before her own death, when she gave Jan a box of one hundred love letters he had written her during World War II.

Love, Bill chronicles the true story of Krulick-Belin's life-changing pilgrimage of the heart to find the father she thought she'd lost forever. The letters lead her on an extraordinary journey following her father's actual footsteps during the war years, leading to unexpected discoveries from Morocco to Paris to upstate New York. She learns about her parents' great love story, about the war in North Africa, and about the fate of the Jews in Morocco, Germany, and France.

Love, Bill offers a testament to the enduring power of determination, love, family, and the unbreakable bond between fathers and daughters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781480892910

Jan Krulick-Belin

Jan Krulick-Belin, a museum and art consultant and art and jewelry historian, has more than forty years of experience at such institutions as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Denver Art Museum, Beaumont (Texas) Art Museum, and Smithsonian Institution. Retired as director of education at the Phoenix Art Museum, she still works with museums, art organizations, and private collectors and served as guest curator at the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum, Phoenix. Visit her online at www.lovebillbook.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 Jan Krulick-Belin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

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without the written permission of the author except in the case of

brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author

and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of

the information contained in this book and in some cases, names

of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-9290-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9289-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9291-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021900129

Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/21/2021

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For my father, who will always be a part of my life.

For my brothers, Steven and Alan, who often stood in for him and walked me down the aisle.

For my mother, who gave me a box of letters and knew that they would open a door.

For my nieces Zoey and Emma, who will now meet their grandfather.

For all the children who grew up missing parents. May they too someday find the answers to their questions.

Especially for my husband, Jim, who accompanied me on this journey and filled an empty hole in my heart.

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Contents

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Acknowledgments

S ometimes the most rewarding experiences in one’s life are those that don’t go according to plan. That can certainly be said about this book. Whenever I thought about writing a book, I always believed that it would be about art, museums, or jewelry history. Instead, a book about my father—along with my mother’s secret life, World War II, foreign travels, and my personal journey to find the man who died when I was only six years old—found me. This book’s creation has led me on an extraordinary journey.

That journey has continued since the book’s original release in 2016. First, I could never have imagined that so many new friendships would be made within my circle of fellow authors. Second, thanks to the many presentations I have made about Love, Bill, I have had the privilege to meet and thank many veterans; hug other women and men who have suffered the loss of a parent; gotten to hear about other families’ love letters; and been welcomed into numerous homes, synagogues, and churches. Third, much to my surprise, my contact with Benhamou family members has expanded. Finally, I could never have imagined that the book would receive so many positive reviews and awards. The best ones, however, have come from its readers. For those, I am most grateful.

Thank you to all of my family and friends who encouraged me to turn what started out to be a search for my father’s wartime friend into a book. The success of that search would never have been possible if not for Faiza Mehdi, Ahmed Mehdi, and Karen Stokely. They embraced my quest as if it were their own, and I will be forever grateful to them.

I acknowledge the Benhamou family for not only welcoming my father into their lives but also, a generation later, opening their hearts to me. I believe that our fathers are smiling down on us today.

I thank the team at Archway Publishing for keeping the book out in the world. Special thanks go out to all of the other people who have assisted in the production of the book: my brother Steven Krulick for his editorial help; Kathy Shipe and Julie Wolf for their design advice; Pat Kofahl and Robert Hilton for their help with my photographs; and those who generously allowed me to use their photographs; Ruth Carter for her legal expertise; and the handful of people who previewed the book.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my husband, Jim, who has been my biggest advocate throughout the course of this project. His were the first pair of eyes to read the manuscript, and I’m sure he will continue to be its most ardent promoter. One couldn’t ask for a better partner.

Part One:

A Box of Letters

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"A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she

will never outgrow your heart."

—Anonymous

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Queens, New York

Spring 1960

D addy, where are you going? I whispered, standing in the doorway of the bedroom I shared with my two older brothers.

I somehow knew this conversation required hushed tones and would hold a very deep secret that only the two of us would share. I certainly couldn’t have known back then that there would be more secrets to come.

It was very early in the morning, that moment when night transitions to a new day, and everything is still cloaked in a velvet silence. The casement window in our bedroom had been cranked open just enough to welcome in the heady scent of newly mowed grass mingled with my mother’s lilac bushes blooming below. My father was carefully closing the door to my parents’ adjacent bedroom. His back was toward me. One hand was still on the doorknob, and the other hand rested tenderly against the door, as if he were holding back what was on the other side. Startled, he turned around. He had been caught like a thief whose clean getaway had been foiled. For a moment, we both stood frozen in the tiny second-floor vestibule, surrounded by the four doors that led to the two bedrooms, the linen closet, and the bathroom.

He couldn’t have been going to work, because he wasn’t wearing the khaki uniform he wore each day to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Nor could it be a special weekend trip, since it was way too early for any of us to be awake. If it were Sunday, he would still be in his pajamas just like me. He was dressed to go out somewhere.

Standing near the bathroom, with its 1950s pink and black tiles, pink towels with their borders of black swans drifting through black reeds, and fuzzy black chenille mats, I couldn’t help but notice that his outfit echoed those very same colors. His cotton poplin bomber jacket was dark gray, and its front plackets sported a mini-argyle pattern of pink, white, light gray, and black.

My father knelt down and pulled me toward him. As I wrapped my arms around his neck, I could smell those two warm, familiar scents that would conjure up memories of him forever after—Gillette shaving cream and Brylcreem. This was just one more of the countless times that we cuddled like this. At the end of each workday, I patiently waited on the stoop in front of our garden apartment for him to appear at the far end of our court, which was comprised of twenty-nine other apartments surrounding three perfectly manicured and chained-off expanses of green grass.1 I would run into his arms and follow him into our house to partake in our before-dinner ritual. He would get out of his uniform, shower off the grime of the day, and join me downstairs in the overstuffed club chair in our living room. Cradling me in his lap, he would read me the funny pages, acting out each one of the comic strips. Louie was my favorite, but it required detailed explanations since there was no written dialogue. Sometimes he would brush his cheek against mine, mischievously tickling me with his sandpapery five-o’clock shadow.

This was our special time. I imagined we would spend the rest of our lives together just like this. At five years old, how could I have ever known that things would drastically change? Words like forever and lifetime had no definable limits or boundaries for me. The world I knew was all about being loved in my father’s lap.

My father’s sister, my aunt Shirley, once told me that when I was born, my father called her immediately from the hospital with the news. She told me that after having two boys, He was thrilled to death. He proudly announced over the phone to her, I have a little princess. My God, we have a daughter!

On this particular morning, so vivid in my memory, Daddy brushed his cleanly shaven face against mine once again. I ran my hand over his slicked back dark hair.

Just shaved, he said.

We often shared his morning shaving ritual. I would stand atop the toilet so we could be at eye level, and he’d playfully place a dollop of the frothy cream on the tip of my nose. I would watch with fascination as he guided the silver razor over the contours of his face and neck with precision, the blade making a subtle scraping sound as the white layer gave way to bare pink skin. A quick rinse of the razor under the running faucet, one tap against the side of the sink, and the ceremony would be complete.

All done, he’d say as he lifted me down to the floor. But this morning, he had shaved without my watchful supervision.

With a kiss on each of my cheeks, he said, Daddy is sick and has to go to the hospital for a little while.

But I wanna come with you, I pleaded.

You can’t, honey.

But when will you be home? I asked.

I’ll be back soon.

Promise?

I promise. Now go back to bed.

I don’t remember if he said he loved me, but I want to believe he did. He quietly descended the eleven stairs to the first-floor living room, his silent escape betrayed only by the creaky third step from the bottom. I listened as our green front door opened and closed and the screen door slammed a couple of seconds later.

That was the last time I ever saw my father.

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Dad and me (age five) with

Mom and Steven, 1960

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Queens, New York

Summer 1960

N othing seemed normal that summer. Each day was filled with whispered conversations, secrets, and my parents’ unexplained absences. Had it been a normal summer, my girlfriends and I would have been playing with our Barbie and Ken dolls outside on our small front lawn, turning a simple kerchief and two twigs into their miniature campground. Or I might have been swimming out there in our yellow-and-green inflatable wading pool. Maybe I would have been lurking around the bushes with some of the neighborhood boys trying to catch honeybees in an empty dill pickle jar by trapping them with its perforated lid. It was always tricky letting the bees go. You’d shake up the jar, loosen the lid, toss it to the ground, and run away in time to avoid getting stung. I might have been playing an impromptu game of tag, hide-and-seek, or red light-green light with any number of my playmates who lived just doors away. Each afternoon, all our activities would have been interrupted by the sound of the bells on the Good Humor truck. It was always hard to decide between the vanilla Dixie Cup and Chocolate Éclair bar.

On a normal summer evening, I might have played outside until well after dark, since bedtime was an hour later than it was during the school year. I might have captured lightning bugs with that same pickle jar. On the Fourth of July, we would have congregated at the flagpole at the center of the neighborhood to watch some of the teenage boys mischievously set off firecrackers. We were only allowed to light sparklers in front of our house. Daddy would eventually have to come outside and drag me in for bedtime because I had ignored his time to come in yell one too many times. But his anger quickly vanished as I got ready for bed. Once I was dressed in my baby-doll pajamas, he’d always be there to kiss me goodnight. I would quickly fall asleep to the whirring of the Vornado fan that barely gave relief from the sticky night air.

Had it been a normal summer, there would have been a birthday party with balloons and themed paper plates and napkins for the cake and ice cream. In previous years, I had gotten to choose between Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, the Cat in the Hat, the Flintstones, or the Mouseketeers. I was always envious of all the other kids whose birthdays fell during the school year because they got to celebrate the occasion throughout the day, even at school. But getting to wear a stiff crinoline party dress and shiny patent-leather Mary Janes, and play pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs almost made up for having a July birthday. I think I turned six very uneventfully that summer.

Had it been a normal summer, we would have gone out for dinner most Saturday nights. Saturday was Mom’s night off from cooking, especially during the summer. One favorite place was The Happy Robin on Hillside Avenue, a large cafeteria-style family restaurant where we could order hot dogs and hamburgers. Another was the silver streamlined diner. It was like walking into a glitter snow globe with its sleek, sparkling surfaces; polished counter and chrome-trimmed stools; quilted stainless backsplash; large bank of coffee brewers; row of bullet-shaped Hamilton malted machines; and shiny pastry case filled with slices of fruit and meringue pies and sky-high layer cakes. The five of us would all cram into one of the fire engine–red vinyl booths that eventually got sweaty and sticky against my bare, shorts-clad legs. My brothers and I would flip endlessly through the song selections in the tabletop jukebox, even though we rarely played any of them. It was much more fun to just push all the buttons. Eating at the diner meant we could turn our days upside down by ordering breakfast for dinner. I’m not particularly proud of the lack of epicurean sensibilities displayed during my youth. My go-to meal of choice included scrambled eggs drowned in ketchup, mashed potatoes (the closer they tasted to instant, the better), and, for dessert, cherry Jell-O cubes with a shot of real whipped cream on top (not Lucky Whip!). Really, is there anything more evocative of a fifties childhood than Jell-O in any shape or color?

The most exciting dinner spot that Daddy would have taken us to was a few blocks’ walk from our house. The Hamburger Express on Bell Boulevard and 73rd Avenue was just a few doors down from Lamston’s Five and Dime and the Thom McCan Shoe Store. (I preferred the Buster Brown Shoe Store in the other shopping center on Springfield Boulevard; you got fitted for your shoes while sitting astride an old carousel horse.) The Hamburger Express was a small place with counter seating only. A model train track looped around the entire countertop. When your burger was ready, the plate was placed on one of the train cars, and with its whistle blowing, the train chugged along the track until your meal stopped right in front of you.

Had it been a normal summer, we would have spent every Sunday at the beach. My grandparents had a bungalow near the boardwalk at Far Rockaway Beach. Daddy would load all of the necessary supplies into the trunk of our copper-and-white big-finned Plymouth: canvas beach chairs, blankets, beach towels, striped umbrella, red-and-black plaid Thermos filled with pink lemonade, matching plaid plastic picnic hamper with bologna or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (they always got crunchy from the sand no matter how well they were wrapped), clothes to change into (a ritual that often took place embarrassingly out on the beach behind a towel), and a babka cake for Grandma and Grandpa. The three of us kids would load into the back seat, and we’d set off onto the Cross Island Parkway; past the Belmont Park racetrack; past the Dugans Bakery plant and its warm, buttery-sweet aromas; and along Rockaway Boulevard, the scariest part of the trip. The road ran alongside Idlewild Airport (now JFK), adjacent to the red-and-white runway barrier. We would invariably drive by just in time to pass under an incoming plane.

Daddy would yell, Here comes a plane! to give me enough time to bury my head into the car seat. They flew so low on their descent that I was terrified that they would land right on top of our car and crush us flatter than a pancake, but of course, they never did. Daddy would just laugh.

My grandparents’ bungalow was very small and especially crowded on the occasional weekend sleepover. Their front porch faced a pedestrian walkway that was lined with an endless row of similar front porches. We always had to park a bit of a distance away and haul everything from the car to the house. Even though it was a borough away from their Bronx apartment building, I always knew when we were getting close—it too had the comforting smell of chicken and matzo ball soup. As a matter of fact, the entire neighborhood smelled like chicken and matzo ball soup mixed with seaweed, enamel-painted rocking chairs, and musty sheets.

If we weren’t on the beach itself, my brothers and I would spend many hours on the boardwalk, just a few blocks from the bungalow. It too had a distinctive aroma all its own—a combination of the salty sea air, knishes (my favorite was blueberry-cheese), Coppertone, and the tar-coated wood planks that ran the five-mile stretch of beachfront. Family members often reminded me of when I was two or three years old and went missing for several hours. After a frantic search—as you can imagine—my brother Alan (only four or five at the time) had found me looking for the horsies. Apparently, the carousel that was located at the far end of the boardwalk had been my favorite spot. (Maybe that fascination with carousels—remember the shoe store?—explains why, to this day, I’ve always wanted to own an antique carousel horse.) I don’t remember getting lost—it should have traumatized me for life—but one can’t argue with family lore.

Armed with a change purse filled with coins, the three of us would be free to roam the crowded concessions and amusements. We would often succumb to the tempting chocolate-covered ice-cream bars; the red-, white-, and blue-striped rocket-shaped ice pops that dripped down our arms in the summer heat; the greasy french fries and Jerry’s potato or cheese knishes; pink clouds of cotton candy; or sticky, wax-papered wads of pastel-colored taffy. Bells, sirens, screeches, and joyful laughter would spill out from the penny arcades to pull us inside. We either went on the rides or played on the Skee-Ball and bowling machines. Unfortunately for me, however, the entrance to one arcade was guarded by the gypsy fortune-teller machine. When a coin was dropped into the slot, the haggard, turbaned lady inside the glass booth came to life. The machine lit up, and a whirring sound accompanied her nodding head. Her craggy hands then made jerky movements as she waved them over her tarot cards and crystal ball. When she finished, a fortune card would pop out of the chute. But even when the machine was off, her piercing glass eyes seemed to follow me wherever I went. It absolutely terrified me, so I always gave the machine a very wide birth.

Much to my horror, this frightful gypsy didn’t just stay on the boardwalk but managed to find her way into my dreams. Sometime around the age of six, I started having a recurring nightmare that always began and ended the same way: I would approach the front door to our house and try to turn the doorknob, but no matter what I did, it wouldn’t open. I begged to come in, but to no avail. I would then peek through the brass mail slot, only to see that old crone’s menacing face on the other side. With a high-pitched cackle, she would tauntingly tell me, You don’t live here anymore!

I’m not sure how long those dreadful dreams persisted, but my father was no longer around to wipe away the terror-filled tears as he had always been there to do before. Had I been brave enough to invest my own nickel back then, I wonder what that witchy fortune-teller might have told this six-year-old about the future. Perhaps she would have predicted that there would be no more Sundays at Rockaway Beach. As an adult, I would realize that there wouldn’t have been any need to spend money for a fortune card. That gypsy’s haunting presence in my dreams was her way of forecasting my future; she was telling me that my home as I had always known it was gone and that nothing would ever be the same again.

Had it been a normal summer, my brothers, Steven (age ten) and Alan (age eight), would have been around to play with me. Instead, they were sent off to Surprise Lake Camp, a sleepaway camp located in Cold Spring, New York (approximately sixty miles north of New York City). I don’t remember any other time when they had been away for so long. There had always been the five of us in our house. Now there were only two of us—Mom and me. I was even sent away to my aunt and uncle’s house in New Jersey for a period of time. The best part of living there was having a dog to play with. He wasn’t Lassie but an adequate substitute. It seemed like an exciting adventure at first, but after a while, I just wanted to go home. But when I was home, my mother was often gone during the day. When she was there, she seemed to inhabit another world, remote from the one that I was familiar with. There were always people coming and going, but they moved around me as if I wasn’t there; I had become a ghost, neither seen nor heard. They made sure that I couldn’t overhear their discussions. My brothers and I were used to hearing Yiddish when adult conversations weren’t meant for our ears—"Shhh! Zug gornisht! The kinder … (Say nothing! The children…")—but now, it seemed like no conversation was meant for our ears.

As time passed, my father was mentioned less and less. It was as if by not talking about him, I was supposed to forget that he had ever existed. There would be no visits to the hospital. It was better for the children to remember him the way he was; they’re too young to understand; they’re just children; they don’t need to know what’s going on. Occasionally, Daddy’s absence was temporarily erased by a surprise present from the hospital gift shop. One particular toy sticks in my memory—a small, flexible rubber donkey with a Mexican rider wearing a sombrero on its back. When I squeezed the attached atomizer, the donkey would buck. I remember thinking that it was an odd choice, but I suppose that the selection was limited—and at least it was a sign that my father didn’t want me to forget that he was still a part of my life and, more importantly, that he still loved me. When I was much older and found out how sick he truly was, I surmised that he wasn’t the one who had actually picked out my gifts. I’d like to think that he instructed my mother to pick something out for me, but even thinking he made the smallest effort to send me a gift at all makes the memory of it that much sweeter.

While others felt that it was best to keep the truth from me and pretend that nothing was unusual that summer, I tried very hard to hang onto my memories of my father and his promise to return. Besides, it had been our secret that he would, and through it all, I kept wondering why no one asked me what I wanted or how I felt. Didn’t they know that I too could be affected by his lingering disappearance? Didn’t they know that he missed me as much as I missed him?

So each evening, just as I had always done as far back as I could remember, I sat on the front stoop and waited for my daddy to come home.

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Queens, New York

October 3, 1960

S ummer eventually turned into fall, and I was back in school. Alley Pond Elementary School, or PS 46, was just around the corner from our apartment, and I was in the first grade. The beginning of school was an exciting time marked by new saddle shoes and shirtwaist dresses, and now that I was no longer in kindergarten, I was finally able to get big girl school supplies: a black-and-white hardcover composition notebook, a new pencil case filled with carefully sharpened pink pencils with pink erasers, a yellow plastic ruler, a new box of crayons, and a red-and-blue plaid briefcase with two white buckle closures on the front pockets. There was always something so wonderful about the smell of those new supplies—blank paper, wood, rubber, vinyl, wax. I didn’t need a metal lunchbox like some of my other classmates did; my brothers and I came home for lunch every day. We ran home around the corner at noon and returned to the playground at 12:40 p.m. before going back into the classroom twenty minutes later.

Equipped with our brand-new clothes and school supplies, everything about the first few weeks of school held the promise of a clean, fresh start. Maybe it also had something to do with the fact that the weather seemed to change immediately after Labor Day. It was as if the month of September understood that the start of school marked the moment when the summer heat had to give way to the crisp autumn air and that the change of seasons enabled every first grader to collect the orange, crimson, and yellow maple and oak leaves that would decorate the border of their classroom bulletin board. All things now seemed possible. Perhaps the heaviness that had pervaded our home over the past five months would also be washed away and refreshed by the new season.

On this particular afternoon, Mrs. Hoder announced that we were going to make get-well cards for my father. I never questioned how she knew that my father was in the hospital, but it made me feel like I was the most important person in the room. She approached the newly washed blackboard and grasped from its ledge the wood-and-wire tool that held five pieces of chalk. With it, she scribed the neatly spaced lines on which we were taught how to form our letters with perfect circles and straight up-and-down strokes. We watched as she carefully wrote the words that we were supposed to copy onto our four-fold sheets of manila paper:

To Janet’s Dad

This will go on the front of the card, she explained. But Janet, you will write this:

To Daddy

She then stepped over to the next blackboard and instructed, On the inside of the card, you will write this:

Get Well Soon

Class 1-2

Then we all took out our new rainbow boxes of twenty-four, forty-eight, or sixty-four Crayola crayons, depending upon how many colors we had convinced our mothers we absolutely had to have. Of course, the bigger boxes came with the all-important and most magical ones—gold, silver, and copper.

When you have carefully written all of the words from the blackboard, you may decorate the rest of the card with any design you like.

Mrs. Hoder came over to my desk and gave me a hug. On your card, you will also write ‘Love Janet.’ That will make it stand out from all of the other cards, she said. Your father will know that it’s yours and that it was made with extra love.

With that, we all got to work. The classroom was especially quiet that afternoon with such serious business for a room full of six-year-olds. I selected a purple crayon to write all of the words. On the cover of my card, I drew the face of a girl—my face—in purple with orange eyes, a nose, and a mouth. I drew an orange crown on top of my head, befitting my father’s little princess. On the inside cover under my name, I drew six orange flowers on straight green stems. Two looked like sunbursts, and the other four were plain circles. They sprouted from humps of green grass.

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As each card was completed, it was brought up to the front of the room. Mrs. Hoder ceremoniously wrapped all twenty-five cards up with a ribbon. She placed my card on the top and carefully put the stack in a box before bringing them over to my desk. It was almost three o’clock and time to go home.

With my briefcase in one hand and the box of cards to my father in the other, I decided to take a different route home. My package was too special to waste even an extra second. I was certain that it held magical properties that would cure my father of whatever had kept him away from me for so long.

The official crosswalk was at the southwest corner of the school and was monitored by a white plastic-bandoliered student crossing guard. It led directly to our court and then to our front door. The southeast corner had no painted crosswalk or guard and wasn’t supposed to be crossed, but it was the shortcut to our back door, so I quickly looked both ways, ran across the street, and slipped through the opening between the buildings that led me to our backyard. I bolted up the steps to the kitchen door. I couldn’t wait to show Mom the treasure that I was carrying.

But as I reached the back stoop, I sensed that something wasn’t quite right. I was already used to not normal, but this felt different, much worse. There were lots of voices coming from inside the house. I pulled open the screen door and entered our small pink kitchen. Somebody (I can’t remember who) was standing by the sink and called out, Quick, get Dorothy. Janet’s home from school.

Within an instant, my mother was in the kitchen. There was no after-school hug that day, and the expression on her face was unfamiliar to me. I dropped my briefcase, and as I reached out to show her my box of letters, she grasped my other hand and led me out of the kitchen.

Our apartment was filled with people. Some of them I recognized—neighbors, aunts, uncles, cousins. Many were dressed in black. The big mirror in the dining room was covered with a sheet. Platters of food were scattered all over the dining room table. As we walked through the living room to the staircase, I felt as if everything was happening in slow motion. The voices suddenly stopped, or maybe I just stopped hearing them. All eyes seemed to be fixed on me, and a nauseating feeling began to well up in the pit of my stomach. Indeed, something was very wrong.

Where are my brothers? I thought. I need to find them. They need to be here.

My mother and I climbed the stairs and went into my bedroom. Steven and Alan were already there, sitting on the bottom of the bunk beds. My mother sat down on top of the low bookcase at the foot of Steven’s bed by the door. I sat on the floor at her feet and scanned the familiar titles on the shelves in front of me—The Cat in the Hat and the collections of Little Golden Books, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Hardy Boys, and Pippi Longstocking tales. The mottled beige linoleum floor seemed especially hard and cold at that moment. My mother looked at each of us and said, Your daddy died this morning.

What does that mean? I wondered. A voice in my head screamed that it was impossible. He said he would come home! Besides, I had the box of get-well cards for him, and we had just made them. I knew they would make him better.

I looked down at the box I was still clutching in my right hand. I couldn’t move. The voice in my head continued, Too late, too late. … I’m just too late. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next.

Mom hugged each of us and asked, Do you have any questions?

I don’t remember if there were any questions. I don’t remember if I cried, if my brothers cried, or if there was anything more said in that bedroom at 3:20 in the afternoon of Monday, October 3, 1960. I remember wondering if I was going to be allowed to go outside and play. I remember wanting all of the people in our house to leave.

I wasn’t happy about having the endless stream of visitors over the next few weeks. I remember being angry that I couldn’t watch television for the next seven days while we sat shiva.2 I remember thinking that it was very odd that all the mirrors in the house were covered so that we couldn’t look at ourselves. I remember that my brothers and I didn’t go to the funeral—a decision that was made with the same reasoning that had kept us from visiting Daddy at the hospital. I remember going to school the next day and telling Mrs. Hoder with remarkable detachment, My daddy is dead, and that he never saw the cards that we made for him. Somewhere deep inside, I thought it was my fault that we hadn’t made the cards sooner, since surely they would have made him better. I remember thinking that if I wished hard enough, I could bring him back, or if I waited long enough on the front stoop, I would see him walk toward me from the top of the court like he had always done. I remember just wanting things to go back to the way they had been before that awful day. Even though things had not been normal for quite some time, they seemed to me to be much better than what we were living through now.

Most of all, I remember that this was the last time that my mother ever asked us if we had any questions about our father. Up until the day she died, there existed an unspoken pact that questions about my father were strictly off-limits. To lose a husband who was only fifty years old and to be left with three young children must have been the most horrific card to be dealt. Perhaps it was easier for her to avoid the subject completely, because letting in just one tiny memory might reopen the floodgates of grief. I suppose it would have been like picking at a scab and causing an old wound to bleed, thus making the resulting scar redder, deeper. Even at six, I must have sensed that there was an invisible boundary line that shouldn’t be crossed. Just as my mother may have been too afraid to reminisce, I was too afraid to broach the subject, and so I quickly learned not to ask. Over time, it just became habit.

Where my father was concerned, I grew up in a deafening silence. My parents’ life together became just another secret that I would never be privy to. My mother’s memories were hers alone. Every once in a blue moon, a small tidbit of information would slip out, and quickly, she would shut back down before the escaped words became irretrievable. If I ever mentioned a memory involving my father, she would either question its veracity, since I was too young to possibly remember anything so vividly, or be utterly amazed that I had actually remembered something at all. So there we were, kept miles apart from each other by my father’s death, and together as mother and daughter, we choreographed a lifelong dance of avoidance and shared pain around a man whom we had both loved and lost.

Growing up, I always felt that I was different from all of my friends whose fathers were still alive. While other kids grew up knowing their parents’ stories, I never got to hear how my parents met, what my father’s life was like, or what his dreams were. If it hadn’t been for my aunt Shirley and a handful of cousins who were considerably older than me, I never would have been able to cobble together even the tiniest bits and pieces of my family’s history.

The task of reconstructing the past is never an easy one, but in my case, having been deprived from an early age of both the storytelling that would normally unfold throughout the years and its main storytellers (one by death and one by choice), I was at an extreme disadvantage. Even my brothers have had a hard time helping me fill in the blanks. Our individual memories are understandably fragmented and selective. Recollections are littered with faulty perceptions, incomplete sentences, half-truths, and exaggerated realities. It’s already a challenge to see where we each fit into our family’s collective narrative when a fairly complete story does exist. But when the narrative is as piecemeal as the one I’ve inherited, figuring out our place in it seems nearly impossible.

Thank goodness for my fortieth birthday present from my aunt Shirley; I had asked her to make me a series of cassette recordings that included all of the family stories that she had casually shared with us over the years. Her stories supplied some missing pieces of information, but even my aunt couldn’t answer my questions about my parents’ courtship or marriage. She told me, You’ll have to ask your mother about that. She kept her personal life pretty private back then, even from us.

But I’m asking you because I can’t ask her, I replied.

Sorry, honey. I can’t help you.

Once my aunt died, there were no relatives left to go to with my questions. This was especially unfortunate once I finally embarked upon the archeological dig of my parents’ early lives together. For me, there could only be a lifetime of unanswered questions, unresolved grief, and little closure.

I eventually learned that my father died of multiple myeloma, or bone marrow cancer. My aunt did elaborate in one of her tapes about his time in the hospital. When he first entered the Veterans Hospital in the Bronx (the last day that I saw him), he didn’t know what was wrong with him. He thought his chest pains were remnants of the car accident that we had all been in on May 7, 1960. I remember that day clearly; I had been thrown all the way from the back seat of our big blue Dodge sedan to land feet-first against the windshield, which shattered into a crystalized spiderweb pattern upon impact. Thankfully, we had all gotten by with only cuts and bruises. But it turned out that his pains had nothing to do with the accident. It took a while for the doctors to make a diagnosis, and for weeks, they kept the bad news from him. Finally, my aunt’s doctor gave him the prognosis. Back in 1960, there was little they could do, and apparently, my father’s case was so extreme that they subjected him to endless experimental treatments. He died a slow, very painful death. My aunt and grandmother were at the hospital every day, and my mother was there every other day.

Because of this experience, while growing up, I always believed that once you checked into a hospital, you never came out. It took me a very long time to actually set foot in one, and I even avoided visiting ailing friends and relatives as an adult.

With each passing day, my father’s presence gradually evaporated from our lives. Only the few picture frames holding his photograph provided a quiet reminder that he had once been with us. Once a year, a Yahrzeit candle3 sat on the kitchen counter in his honor. For the twenty-four hours that the flame burned, he was back in our house. Then both would be extinguished for yet another year. When I needed to, I could always close my eyes and replay the selection of scenes in my mind that included him. Every detail remained as clear as could be, except for the one thing that I couldn’t hold on to, no matter how desperately I tried; the first thing that disappeared from my memory was the sound of my father’s voice. There were no tape recordings or family movies to refer to. In my mind, I could see his lips moving, but I could no longer hear how the words sounded. In time, however, I would learn that there were other ways that my father would talk to me.

It became my secret mission to ensure that my father didn’t slip away completely. I hoarded any physical evidence of his existence. Having spent my professional life as a museum educator and curator, I fully understand the power of objects. Even the most commonplace item has the ability to soak up the deepest meaning, retell a lifetime of stories, or instantly evoke a cherished memory. Like a picture, an object can be worth a thousand words, but it’s not the object itself that’s important; what is important are the emotions and memories we attach to that object. Once touched by a loved one, an object can, in turn, touch the person who is left behind. We remember our loved ones through those objects and then have the need to pass those objects—and the memories of those we loved—on.

In Europe, a curator is called a keeper. In a way, I became my father’s keeper—the keeper of anything that would keep my father alive. By high school, I had commandeered Dad’s army dog tags and would occasionally wear them around my neck like a precious talisman. Then it was the gold pocket watch that my grandfather had given him; I sometimes wore that on a black velvet ribbon. Over time, a few purloined photographs from my mother’s photo album made their way into my wallet, and a year before my mother died, I put the engagement diamond that she had received from my father into a pendant. The diamond had previously belonged to his mother, Grandma Fannie Kruleck (for some reason that has never been explained, my father changed the spelling of our last name to Krulick). To this day, that pendant remains a fixture around my neck.

As meaningful as these keepsakes were, however, they were never enough. When you lose a parent at such a young age, you’re left with a cavernous hole in your heart, a constant, raw reminder that something is missing that can never be replaced. That hollowed-out emptiness grew bigger with each successive milestone in my life from which my father was absent: birthday parties, dance recitals, theater productions, my sweet sixteen, my first breakup, graduations, award ceremonies, my first public lecture, and, most of all, my wedding.

It’s probably true that every woman gets her first taste of the love and security that is to be found in a man’s arms from the times spent in her father’s. They’re the memories and lessons that we carry with us for the rest of our lives. They’re the ones that we return to each time a relationship goes wrong or when we feel desperately alone and ask ourselves, Will I ever be loved again? Sometimes we call upon these memories when we need reassurance, and other times, they appear like specters conjured up by a particular smell, song, or memento. They’re buried so deeply inside of us and are so indelibly imprinted upon our very souls that they can never be erased or forgotten. Our fathers are our first loves, our little-girl heroes, and the mirrors in which we first learn to see ourselves as special and capable of giving and receiving love. If our fathers love us, then we can love ourselves. When they shower our mothers with love and tenderness, we learn to expect the same from all the other men in our lives. Our fathers teach us about strength, wisdom, and life’s practicalities. When they run alongside our two-wheelers for the very first time, they know when to hold on and when to let go. When they scare away the demons in our nightmares, it helps us to be unafraid to dream. Before we learn to stand on our own two feet, we must first learn to dance by standing on theirs. As little girls, we always think that we will marry our fathers; instead, they are here to walk us down the aisle and give us away to someone else. There is truly no other bond like the one between daddies and daughters.

Ironically, in spite of my father’s glaring absence from my life, he actually remained the biggest presence in it. He may not have been with me physically, but hardly a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about him. At times in my life, I’ve even found myself consulting him. A psychic once told me that I didn’t need to worry about Dad not being there to walk me down the aisle. My initial surprise that she could home in on my most secret fear quickly