Frank's family carried on after his sudden death. His wife raised their seven children alone, until 10 years later when she met and married a widower from Lockport, whose wife had died and left him to raise their eight children. The wedding took place on July 4, 1975, and both families grew together in love. Without realizing it, Frank faded into the background. Having left few memories behind, he was rarely discussed and his children knew little of him. A shame really, it was as though he'd lost his life twice—once literally, and once in his children's memory. Then, in 2015, Frank's voice was heard once again; 50 years after his death.

I was four years old when my father died and have very few memories of my own, so I thrived on my mother's stories.  To be sure, many were repeated, but occasionally a new one would surface. I wish I had been more inquisitive as a child. But I’d accepted I'd never know my father, though I often wondered what he was like, what it would have been like had he lived and what characteristics, if any, I'd inherited from him. One story my mother repeated often was how my father had written his mother daily when serving in World War II. This I believed to be an exaggeration, until one day my mother ended the telling of the familiar story with, “I have all the letters.”

Upon retrieving the box from the basement, we found over 500 letters in remarkable condition. My mother had saved them, intending to read them one day, but a vision impairment meant she never got to it. That's when I agreed to read them to her. In doing so, the most unexpected thing happened—I was getting to know my father. He was funny and had a strong faith. He loved his family, was devoted to his country, loved to dance, sing and was a bit of a “fuss pot.” Learning all this, I decided to type the letters for my siblings, so they could know him as well. Thus began a five-year journey that changed our lives.

Frank Thompson enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1942, ensuring he would not be drafted. At 21 years of age, he anticipated the upcoming age change, and opted to enlist in order to choose the branch and role in which he would serve. His goal was to be a pilot, but due to a mix-up, and the reduced need for pilots in 1943, he was assigned as a radio operator/gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress—a four-engine heavy bomber. Fortunately, his training kept him stateside from the time he reported for duty in January 1944 until he departed for Europe in March 1945, on his 24th birthday. 

I used to type his letters when I was traveling for work. Long plane rides were the perfect environment to escape back to the 1940s. It was on one such work trip that I got the idea to visit the Yuma Army Air Force base, now a Marine base, a “short” three-hour jaunt from Phoenix. A colleague and I rented a car and drove down with the hope of seeing the base where my father was stationed. Unable to get in because we did not have a sponsor, we took photos by the sign and headed back. It was that trip that inspired me to start visiting the places my father mentioned, tracing his footsteps, embarking on a purposeful journey without knowing where it would lead me.

After Yuma, I visited Sioux Falls and from there I made plans to visit Horham, England, and the 95th Bomb Group Heritage Museum. Over the three years it took to type the letters, I'd made some fantastic connections with museums and various organizations, one of which was The Goldfish Club. The club is an organization of veterans who survived a water landing or “ditching” as a result of using a “Mae West” lifejacket and/or a dinghy, originally manufactured and sponsored by the Cow Co. While in the UK, I made plans to connect with the Goldfish president, Art Stacey. It was this club that led me to the most exciting part of my journey.

After the war, on a training mission over the North Sea, the engine on my father's plane caught fire and the aircraft was forced to ditch. His pilot, “Big Sundin,” performed the perfect ditching, saving the lives of his entire crew, including my father. Had it not been for his skill as a 21-year-old B-17 pilot, my entire family would not exist. My father spoke very highly of him in his letters, which made me wonder what ever happened to him. I was not prepared for what I learned.

In August 2016, I was typing my father’s letters from May 1945 and knew his crew would be ditching soon. I forced myself to not jump ahead in the letters, hoping beyond hope that he'd written about what happened. I'd read that, for obvious reasons, pilots were not able to practice ditching their planes, and that they either got it right or they crashed. This knowledge sent me to the internet to see whatever became of Roger W. Sundin. My search brought me to a Boston area marketing firm whose founder was Roger W. Sundin, Jr. Since “Big Sundin” hailed from Rhode Island, I thought the chances were good that this may be a relative. An email exchange soon confirmed that, indeed, I'd found the right family, and that Roger, Sr. would be celebrating his 93rd birthday that week. If I hadn't been sitting, I would have fallen over. Not only had I found him, but he was alive and well and living independently with his wife in Maine. More than anything, I wanted to meet him. This his son was willing to arrange, and thus began a most unlikely friendship that continues today.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, I would visit “Big Sundin” a couple times a year. Our early visits were filled with Roger recounting what my father had written, and filling in the facts my father omitted, not wanting to worry his family. It was on one of those visits that Roger unofficially ordered me to, “Write the damn book!” He'd scoured the letters and shared so many facts and insights about the crew, from bombing Germany and France to floating in dinghies in the middle of the North Sea waiting to be rescued, and he wanted me to put it all together. His wife Gloria and I started writing our own letters, eventually switching to text messages and finally phone calls as the three of us worked to structure the story that would become An Unexpected Coddiwomple: The story of a father's sudden death, a box of World War II letters, and a daughter's life transformed.

But the story didn’t end with “writing the damn book.”  In March 2018, an email arrived from Art Stacey. It seems The Goldfish Club had a limited number of invitations to The Not Forgotten Association's garden party—to be held at Buckingham Palace. Would Roger, Gloria and I like to attend? It's not every day you get an invitation to a garden party at Buckingham Palace, and although Roger and Gloria would have loved to attend, at 94 and 93 years of age respectively, their traveling days were over. So to represent them, as well as our father, I invited my youngest brother Peter to join me instead. A member of the U.S. Army Reserve for almost 40 years, and never having met our father, he was honored to accept my invitation.

I'm often asked about the title I chose for the book that resulted from this adventure. What does “coddiwomple” mean? Why did I choose that title for a book about World War II? Well, the answer is simple: coddiwomple means to travel, with purpose, to an unknown destination. It is English slang and perfectly encapsulates my father's journey—to survive the war, get home, and get on with his life—as well as and my own journey to “meet” the father who'd been a mystery to me my entire life. How fortunate a single word exists that explains all that!

Following my father's journey opened so many doors for me, beyond the obvious. I look at my hometown of Niagara Falls quite differently now. His references to Kleinhans men's store in Buffalo, and the local grocer, Lobianco's, in the Falls strike familiar memories. I found the two homes my father lived in as a child, learned he attended 5th Street and 10th Street elementary schools, North Junior High School, played the clarinet, sang in the choir and was an officer of the French Club. He was a parishioner at Our Lady of Lebanon Church, belonged to a fraternity, wrote and gave the Mantel speech as a high school senior, and so much more.

I researched my father's pals from the Army to learn what I could, met his heroic pilot face to face, read all their mission reports, no longer restricted, and got a first-hand idea of the dangers he and his crew faced during their bombing missions. I met people from March Field in California, and from the “Mighty Eighth” in Georgia, visited his base in the UK, got him reinstated in The Goldfish Club (becoming an associate member myself) and actually took a flight on a B-17.

Together, my father and I embarked on our very different journeys, both with purpose, not knowing where they'd take us. Of course, I knew my father's destiny prior to discovering the letters and wished many times while reading his letters that I could have warned him. As for my journey, I know one thing for certain; I no longer consider my father a stranger, I feel as though I've known him my entire life.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Loretto M. Thompson is a career marketing professional with a special penchant for writing.  Also an accomplished painter, she lives in Niagara Falls in a “tiny house” nestled along the Straits of Niagara.