My Father Had No Children

By Alana Lindberg Jolley

My Father Had No Children is a memoir exploring the author's personal journey of discovering her father's identity and ultimately understanding her own sense of self. The book delves into the author's quest to uncover the truth about her father's background.

It is an emotional journey questioning her own identity while attempting to reconcile the conflicting information she receives while visiting a government office, that her father had no children. Despite her efforts, she is met with bureaucratic rules and regulations, preventing her from learning the truth about her father.

The author expresses her deep sense of loss and confusion, grappling with the idea she may not be her father's biological child. She questions her mother's role in the situation and contemplates the significance of her grandmother, Peach, who played a part in her early life.

The memoir is a personal story but also touches on broader themes of identity, family, and the impact of war on the lives of children left behind. It explores a child's quest for connection and understanding when there is loss of a parent at an early age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890613776

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: My Father Had No Children

2: Questions—No Answers

3: Who Was Peach?

4: Walter

5: Walter's Youth—WWII Begins

6: Walter—Glider Pilot Training

7: Lil—My Mom

8: Romance Blooms

9: Laurinburg-Maxton, North Carolina

10: Prelude to Normandy

11: Home Front

12: D-Day Normandy

13: Operation Dragoon

14: Operation Market Garden—Holland

15: Bastogne, Belgium

16: Operation Varsity—Rhine River Crossing

17: Angels of Death

18: War Orphan's Tale

19: The Falls

20: Life in Las Vegas

21: Alana/Lee—Las Vegas High School

22: Uncle Johnny, My Father's Brother

23: Life and Letters

24: Familia—Mexico/Aunt Virginia's Book

25: The Glider Gang—More Letters

26: Lost in the Victory

27: What If? Walter's Legacy

28: Closure

Epilogue: My Father Came Back

To My Father

Appendix: Excerpts from GP Letters

Glossary

Annotated Bibliography

About the Author

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My Father Had No Children

Alana Lindberg Jolley

Copyright © 2024 Alana Lindberg Jolley

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89061-376-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89061-378-3 (Hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-89061-377-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

For Walter, my dad

Foreword

There are not many books about the average man who died in World War II, outside of family accounts that might change over the years. My Father Had No Children is an excellent exception.

Based on accurate historical research from the records of the National Archives and elsewhere, Alana Lindberg-Jolley has brought the story of her father back to life. Her father was Flight Officer Walter B. Lindberg; he was killed in a non-battle glider crash at Tours, France, on February 22, 1945.

Born eight months before her father's death, Alana combed her family records to find out about his life prior to his time in the Army Air Corps. The result was a fascinating look at his life, both before and during his time in World War II. She has succeeded in making a man she never knew become real, both to herself and the reader.

Any reader who is interested in World War II or the ways that the loss of a loved one can affect a survivor's life will enjoy this book very much.

Bill Beigel

WWII researcher

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude is for the letters written to my dad overseas by family members during WWII. Along with his mother, there were aunts, uncles, and cousins who wrote from the United States and Mexico. Without those cherished letters, my and my dad's stories could not have been written.

I wish to thank William L. Bill Biegel at ww2research.com for his WWII research expertise. Without the official flight logs and other official government reports, which he acquired from the National Archives, for me, a major part of Walter's story would be missing.

My thanks and appreciation also to the dedicated researchers at the WWII Glider Pilots Association and their website (ww2gp.org) as well as the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock, Texas. They both keep the records of the thousands of glider pilots who sacrificed so much for so many in WWII.

I am forever thankful to my husband, who has prodded me for many years to write my story. When the writing began, he was there to edit, make suggestions, and help me say important things that needed to be said—even though painful for me to write. I am deeply grateful for his love and support.

Introduction

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

—Mark Twain

If you don't know who you are, how do you know why you were born? My journey has revolved around learning who my father was, to find out who I am.

I wrote this book for my father, Walter Bert Lindberg, for my family, and for his posterity. I also wrote it for all children who feel lost and need to know where they came from and what life possibilities might be opened for them. Even in the sunset of our lives, we are still the children of those who have gone before us.

Who were my dad's parents? Who were his siblings? Where did he grow up? What was his education? What were his interests, his hobbies, his talents? Why did he volunteer to become a glider pilot in WWII? Who were his friends and associates, and what did they think of him?

The picture of him, so handsome in his military uniform, has been on my dresser forever. He died when I was eight months old. This book is my father's story, but within his fascinating story is also my story of discovery—as Mark Twain suggests—of why I was born.

1

My Father Had No Children

The day was penetratingly cold and dreary in February of 1967. It was exactly how I felt. My husband, Lee, and I were silent driving to the Social Security Administration office in Provo, Utah. I had a lot of apprehension about the meeting I was about to have with Mr. Bowcutt. He had insisted he needed to talk to me face-to-face and not over the phone. I was eight months pregnant with my first child, and the arduous task of finishing my degree at Brigham Young University was still before me.

I had been trying, for two years, to claim the Social Security benefits of my deceased-veteran father to finish my college education. I had two years of university studies behind me before I learned dependent children of deceased veterans could claim Social Security benefits for educational purposes. I had applied for those benefits over a year ago.

We turned the corner, and I saw an American flag waving on the building in front of us, which indicated we were in the right place. This was where the Social Security Administration conducted business, a federal building. Lee dropped me off in front, and I walked up the steps.

To say I was nervous would be an understatement. Why wouldn't Mr. Bowcutt give me the information I was seeking over the phone? I guessed it was just about government red tape and bureaucracy. Using the money for a dead veteran's child's education seemed appropriate to me since my father had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

The secretary at the front desk escorted me down a long, dingy hallway to Mr. Bowcutt's office. The file folder, chock-full of papers under his arm, was the first thing I noticed about him. As my apprehension increased, he put the file folder down while reaching across to shake my hand. He was tall and looked well built underneath his gray suit and perfectly placed tie. His hair, dark with streaks of gray, was parted and smoothed to flat perfection. He made eye contact with me through his black-rimmed glasses. We both sat down.

He began to speak in a low, deliberate voice, which conveyed to me an unwavering assurance on his part. I didn't know why, but my hands were sweaty, and suddenly I wasn't just nervous. I felt scared and uncomfortable. This meeting was the culmination of two years of what I assumed was government stall tactics. The reason for the endless numbers of forms I filled out, the phone calls nobody returned, and the meetings cancelled were all being methodically explained to me by Mr. Bowcutt. He fumbled with the papers, seeming perhaps a little nervous himself.

Much of what he said behind his oversized and over-cluttered desk made no sense to me. This meeting was about rules and regulations, time running out, and my age. I had made the request for college money two years ago. He said I was going on twenty-three and too old, or something to that effect.

I can still feel the coldness of that office with its piles of manila folders on top of steel-gray filing cabinets. The only decoration was the large picture of President Lyndon B. Johnson hanging on the wall behind the man who spoke to me. I thought he was going to tell me more about my father's service, et cetera, but somehow, I knew that was not going to be the case.

I did not know my father because I was eight months old when he died, but he was always my hero and a great influence on my important life decisions. I wanted him to be proud of me, as I was of him. I had imagined his bravery and distinguished service as a glider pilot in World War II. My mom had shown me some pictures of my dad in France and the planes he flew. That was the extent of my knowledge about what my father did overseas.

Though the war was won by the United States and its Allies, there were many children, like me, who were left without a father in that victory. Mr. Bowcutt kept on talking. Clearing his throat brought me back to the conversation, which I obviously wasn't paying attention to. He stated clearly, You need to understand, Mrs. Jolley, that nothing we have uncovered in our exhaustive research, including conversations with your mother, can change the one element, which is the determining factor for whether you can receive your father's Social Security money for college.

Well, I'm trying to understand what that one element might be, I said. He looked at me sternly and said in his ever deep, slow, and deliberate voice, "Walter Lindberg had no children. He was married but not to your mother. You are not eligible for his Social Security benefits under the rules of the Social Security Administration." I sat there, frozen in the moment, but it seemed like forever.

Wait—what did you say? My father had no children? As I processed his words slowly, in my mind, tears welled up in my eyes. I asked him, How can you sit there so coldly and tell me such a thing when it isn't true? I began scrounging through my purse. I have something that proves I'm his daughter.

I pulled a faded and wrinkled light-blue envelope from my purse, producing a handwritten poem addressed to me, written by Walter Lindberg. This is a Valentine poem my father composed for me. Look at this postmark! Here, see—February 1945. This letter is written to me, Alana Lindberg. I am his daughter! He wrote this less than a month before he died in a plane crash in Tours, France. I pushed the envelope across his desk onto the open file folder. Who do you think sent me this Valentine from France? I asked.

Valentine poem to Alana, February 1945

By this time, I was standing up and raising my voice through my tears. I do not believe you, I do not believe you! I plopped back down in my chair and buried my head in my hands. He pushed a box of Kleenex across his desk toward me.

What does that mean, my father wasn't my father? How did my father have no children? I'm sitting right here in this chair! I don't believe your research! Your research is wrong! My mother kept that Valentine for me until I could read it myself. I've been carrying it in my purse for years because it was from my dad who never came home! Mr. Bowcutt opened the tattered envelope, pulled out the contents, and carefully unfolded the letter.

He shook his head back and forth while silently reading the words. In that instant, I became sick to my stomach and not from being pregnant. I could have easily thrown up. I felt weak and shaky. My father's face—the face that had looked at me every morning from my dresser, so handsome in his uniform—was now distorted in my mind. The father I worshipped, and yes, I even prayed to him in times of childhood stress. How was all this possible, this person telling me I don't have a father?

I pulled my dad's uniform so many times out of a dull green footlocker in our basement. I used to put it on to pretend my father's arms were around me. I wanted Mr. Bowcutt to give me an answer! Why do I have his uniform if he isn't my dad? I raised my voice again and told him very sternly, "Somehow you are wrong, I know you are wrong. You must be wrong! I kept talking over Bowcutt's interrupting voice, I just told you, I'm his daughter! He has a daughter! It's me, I'm sitting right here in front of you! Can you not see me?"

I also reminded him, "I have been going to school on Veteran's benefits. Peach, my father's mother—my grandmother—set up a trust fund for me after he died. I have received Veteran's benefits for every month I was a full-time student. I had to go to the VA office and sign for that money every single month! His tart reply was, Veteran's benefits are different from Social Security benefits. The Veteran's Administration has a different set of rules than we do here at the Social Security Administration. That's just the way it is, Mrs. Jolley."

You can't be serious! Oh, the rules, it is about the rules? I have friends whose fathers died in the war, and they are getting their checks. I remembered the pile of papers in the VA office, from which I found my own form every month. There were so many of us, I was only one among those many. Our fathers gave their lives, I told him. Why shouldn't we receive money for our education? Bowcutt shrugged his shoulders.

My father was dead, and I was alive. At that moment, I could not think; it was too painful. I hit the Kleenex box off the desk, sending it to the floor. Bowcutt stood up behind his desk. I stared straight through him. He kept talking, but I wasn't listening anymore. The painting of President Johnson was still hanging on the wall behind him. The room had not changed at all, but the gray metal filing cabinets closed in on me. I wanted to run out of there, but there was no energy left in my body. When I got up to leave, I could barely walk. Even if I had not been so pregnant, I could not have run.

I don't know how I made it down the long hallway, down the steps, and back to where Lee was waiting for me in the car. Somehow, I reached the glass door to leave the building and pushed it open. The cold air rushed in and was welcome on my hot and tearful face. It was nearly dark outside, and the streetlights magnified the falling snow flurries.

I was numb but not from the cold. Walter Lindberg had no children? Really? I whispered to myself, Then who am I? Am I just nobody? I did not have an identity crisis until that moment. I was twenty-two years old, married, and almost a mother, yet I did not know who I was. Where was I going to start to unravel that awful reality if it was, in fact, true?

I asked myself, Did I not have a grandmother called Peach? Who was she? I had the baby picture of me with my father's picture sitting next to me when I was four months old. In that picture, I am wearing a pink crocheted outfit my dad's mother, Peach, made for me. In the picture, I have on a silver bracelet made from glider pilot metal wings on my little wrist.

My father had that bracelet made from his glider wings, which identified glider pilots. He sent the bracelet to me from overseas. How could I not be Walter's daughter? And what about my Valentine poem? So many memories and thoughts pulsed through my now broken identity.

I had seen and held my birth certificate identifying Walter Lindberg as my father. His occupation, on the document is stated as soldier.

I wondered how I was going to approach my mother about this. I went home that day with so many questions, which I was sure were going to need very long answers. On my slow walk to the car, I had a simple but frightening thought. I asked myself out loud, If Walter Lindberg is not my father, then who is? In my heart, I was sure that he was no matter what I had just been told.

Lee had been patiently waiting for me in the car. The car had seemed miles away in my stunned state of mind. My whole life flashed before me while crossing the street. My chest was so tight I could hardly breathe. When I finally reached the car, I opened the door and I fell into the arms of my husband. I sobbed uncontrollably while relating to him what I had been told. He said, Honey, don't cry, just talk to me. Why are you so upset? In between my convulsive sobs, I replied, You won't believe what I'm going to tell you! That man just told me, my father had no children!'

Everything I was told in the previous half hour went against all I thought I knew about my father, my mother, and how I became Alana Jean Lindberg. Somehow, I was going to have to unravel all of this, but how? I had visited my uncle Johnny, my dad's brother, two years before in the summer of 1965, completely ignorant of this information. Should I approach him now about this? If so, how? I wanted to ask him, Am I your niece or not?

Those were some of the thoughts that crossed my mind. I wanted to ask my mother, Is the child I am about to give birth to the grandchild of Walter Lindberg or not? I had no idea where those thoughts were going to take me in the future. I didn't know if I would find the answers my heart would be looking for and hoping for. One thing I knew for sure was that I was going to find the truth.

2

Questions—No Answers

March 4, 1967, seemed like years from the day I spent at the Social Security Administration, but it was only three weeks. My daughter's birth arrived when I was still in the pain of seemingly losing my identity. In my arms I held a child, unlike myself, whose identity would never be in question. I loved holding, touching, watching, and smelling that new little person. Yet the happy emotions of motherhood were mixed up with the sad feelings of loss, unbelief, and frustration, which I had not been able to shake off since that awful day at the Social Security Administration.

That day, after my collapse in the car, we drove back to our house in complete silence. I did not tell Lee all that I found out. When we got home, I went straight to our bedroom. I grabbed my father's picture off the dresser and threw it face down into the top drawer, under my folded clothing. I couldn't cry anymore; I was plain mad! Why didn't my mother tell me all this? I could see why when I was a child, but then I wasn't a child anymore. As I look back, though, I'm not sure how she would, or could have, revealed her charade to me.

During the weeks of recovery from childbirth, I had many hours of contemplation tending my newborn. Lee was working two jobs and going to school, so my daughter and I were alone much of the time. I knew I wasn't going to finish my degree anytime soon, since the extra money was not forthcoming from my father's Social Security. At least that was put to rest. What about all the other questions I was still pondering? The following are the things I knew while growing up.

The only contact, over twenty-two-plus years, with any of my dad's family was with my grandma Peach when I was six years old and with Johnny, my father's brother in 1965, right before my twenty-first birthday. Did anybody else in my dad's family know that I existed? Walter Lindberg is named as my father on my birth certificate. How could that fact be wrong? Certainly, my mother would not lie about that, would she? But why did she keep me from my dad's family? I never saw Peach again after I turned six; I knew she lived in Los Angeles, but I didn't have an address or a phone number.

How was I able to receive Veteran's benefits but not my dad's Social Security? Why did Peach come to Louisville to see me and my mom when I was a baby shortly after Walter died? She drove across the United States from Los Angeles, California, by herself. There were no interstate highways, no GPS, and no cell phones. It took her several days to make the drive. I reasoned she would not have done that if I was not her granddaughter.

My mother kept a baby book for me with no more entries after I was eight months old, except the note about my father's death. My father's own handwriting in the book refers to Alana—that's me. The last picture in my baby book is of Peach holding me, my mother is sitting beside her, and my mother's overwhelming grief is obvious in the picture. I'm sitting on Peach's lap, and she has a little smile, but the blurry black-and-white photo has always made me sad to look at it.

Peach and Alana (March 1945) and Lillian (my mom)

The baby book has no other entries after Peach's visit. All the pages before have entries practically moment by moment of my baby life: when I first smiled, when I turned over and when I first sat up, and even when I had hiccups. All my measurements and my first teeth are recorded as well.

After I gave birth to my own daughter, I understood the excitement of having a newborn. I did the same thing exactly in my daughter's baby book, writing almost minute by minute her progress. My mother gave me my baby book so I could read what my dad wrote and what she wrote when he died. She wanted me to have it because it related to my dad, so I had something to show to my own children of my father, their grandfather.

Mother gave me the gold baby ring with my initial A on it, sent to me from France by my dad. She gave me my father's watch, his wallet, and the water-stained baby shoe that he carried with him in combat. I remember it because later it was mounted on a piece of decorative wood. His letter to my mom said, The shoe got wet when I landed in a field, which the Germans flooded.

I had so much evidence, which I could have shown to Mr. Bowcutt if he had given me the opportunity. Besides my personal Valentine and the personal items belonging to my father, I have a compelling letter from my father's brother, Johnny. It was written to my mother on May 5, 1945, two months after Peach's visit to Louisville. Somewhere in Germany was the heading. It is typed, but the words seem to be sincere in their intentions to comfort my mother.

Following are excerpts from John Lindberg's letter. I don't know if showing it to Mr. Bowcutt would have made a difference, but it would have made me feel better if I had shown it to him. John wrote:

Dear Lil,

The war is about over now—the war with Germany. No one will ever know the hearts that have been broken, the lives ruined, the destruction wrought, the lasting impressions this war has made on civilization as a whole. Our family has felt this war more than many others because in it we have lost so many fine young men.

The letter is long, and skipping over some parts, he continued.

It is hard for me to realize that my only brother is gone, but I am thankful that he has a child because in his daughter, I know, flows the blood of one of the finest guys that ever lived. Try not to let this terrible thing ruin your outlook on life. Walt, above all, was never a quitter and could not understand defeatism. He wouldn't want this thing to ruin your life. You have his child, and yours, I know she is a real doll.

For her you must carry on… He is gone, but his memory