Finding Dad: From "Love Child" to Daughter (21 page)

Luc translated: “It says, ‘Here on December 1
^st
1943, an American B-17 Bomber ‘Flying Fortress’ crashed. Five crew members were killed. Five young men died for our freedom.’ ”

Tracy ran his fingers over the inscription and shook his head. “It’s just unbelievable.”

I was grateful Tracy and I could experience this together. It was like Dad was showing us something he had never been able to tell us when he was alive. He’d resisted so much in his life. Me, for one, his toughness toward my brothers, and his discomfort with matters of the heart—they were effects of what had happened here. He had returned home a hero, but he’d carry the bullet in his heart, where no one could see. It was not okay for his generation to express fear or share their grief.

I was starting to understand why my father liked to say he only cared about “Who, what, where, when, how—the
why
doesn’t matter.” For Dad, the
why
was subjective, based on people’s opinion and not the facts. Maybe
why
was too painful or frightening.

To me, standing on this field with Tracy, the
why
was everything and the exact answer to so many of my questions. Two years after his death, I had discovered the missing puzzle piece that unlocked the essence of my father’s heart, the part of him he had kept locked away so tightly in life.

I cried for him and let him grieve across the veil. My heart felt free.
It’s okay, Dad, I understand now, and I love you
. I knew he was with us every step of this journey, and I felt it was healing him as much as it was us.

The next stop was Luc’s house. His lovely wife, Karine, a tall blonde woman with a big smile, opened the door and welcomed us into their charming home. I could feel the love in this place— from the carefully manicured yard with its roses and hedges, to the shiny clean tile floors. They had raised five children here after falling in love in high school. Luc and Karine kept apologizing that it wasn’t grander. “What your father must have thought when he came here to our common home with our many children and dog,” Karine said, still mortified after all those years. She had nothing to apologize for. I saw theirs as a perfect life.

Over lunch of sandwiches, tomato soup, and their local specialty, Hunter’s bread, Luc explained he had always wanted to find my father, and couldn’t believe it when he saw him on CNN when he became governor. We laughed at the fact that both of us had tracked him down the same way.

“I used to set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night, so I could call him at eight a.m. It took me two years to get hold of him!”

“Don’t feel bad, Luc. It took me even longer.” Luckily, my father eventually came through for both of us. For Luc, it was when Dad came to Belgium for his book signing in the 90s.

After lunch, Luc brought Tracy, the crew, and me outside to the backyard, where he had set up crates full of fragments from Dad’s plane. There were thousands of pieces of bullets, metal fragments, and Plexiglas. The sheer volume was overwhelming. This was Luc’s life’s work laid out for the cameras to capture, and for us to touch. Some were tiny specs, others big chunks of twisted metal.

I picked up one of the metal fragments and traced it with my fingers. “What’s this?”

“It’s part of the outside of the plane—see how one side is dark green and the other is lighter? That’s how the B-17 was painted.”

Luc was like a walking encyclopedia on the plane, deciphering where each tiny piece fit in.

He brought out a wooden box and opened it for me to see. “These are parts of your father’s parachute, and these are the clips and what’s left of the silk.”

“How do you know it’s his?” I asked feeling another wave of emotion course through my veins.

“The woman who cleaned his wounds saved it and made clothes. She gave me what was left.”

I smiled remembering how Dad loved to tell the story of how he learned the woman used his silk parachute to make a wedding dress for her daughter, something he says he heard on his first trip to meet Luc.

I wished I could take a few more pieces of the plane, but I didn’t want to ask, since it was clear every spec of metal meant something to Luc.

Just as we were about to wrap up shooting, Luc brought out a gift for me. Opening the bubble wrap sleeve, I pulled out a shadowbox filled with pieces of my dad’s plane. Luc had painstakingly glued down red velvet and attached a bullet, Plexiglas, and two other pieces of metal. He carefully wrote a message on archival paper on the back, recording that these pieces, “came from the B-17
Damn Yankee
that was shot down December 1, 1943.”

Tears stung my eyes as they spilled over and rolled down my cheeks. How could I ever thank him for this beautiful memorial to my father? I had hoped to take home some of Dad’s treasures, and Luc had seen to it that I’d have more than just pieces—I’d have a wonderful piece of art for my wall at home.

Even my studio-grade cosmetics couldn’t compete with my waterworks.

Tracy had been watching the filming with Luc’s family and started to walk toward me, holding out a handkerchief he had taken from his pocket. I took it while laughing and crying all at once. “Seriously,” I said in mid-choke, “you are really like Dad. You’re the only other person I know to always carry a cotton hankie!”

Tracy laughed and hugged me while I used his Dad-inspired hankie to wipe away the drippy mascara. It was just one more reminder that Dad was with us.

Luc brought us into his kitchen, where he showed us four giant binders filled with more stuff on Dad. Luc had saved every article, e-mail, even Christmas cards, and put them in protective plastic sleeves in the binders. As I skimmed through the pages, I saw Luc even had the articles about me uniting with Dad at the news conference, and my official station bio he had printed off the website. Tracy and I were amazed at how this man—a continent away with no direct connection to our father—had done more to preserve his legacy than we had. My collections of Dad’s life were still crammed in a file marked “Dad” in my desk drawer.

“I am
so
going to Staples when I get home and put Dad’s stuff in a proper binder,” I said, laughing to Tracy.

We hit another emotional landmine when we stumbled across a letter my father had written in 1945 to the sister of one of the women who helped him escape from Jabbeke. My father remembered the sister lived in the U.S., so when he made it home, he found her and wrote her a letter saying how grateful he was to her family for helping him survive. Tracy’s voice broke while reading the letter out loud. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place, and I was so happy to be sharing this once-in-a-lifetime experience with him.

I marveled at his neat, legible cursive. How different it was from his trademark illegible handwriting that I’d come to know. I was realizing again there was a man who had existed before he became our father; a man who might have been quite different from the man we knew as war hero, prosecutor, tycoon, governor, and yes, Dad. That man had been shaped by the fears he’d had to face throughout his life, and with each dragon he slew, he became tougher, more powerful—and more removed from his heart.

His sheer determination and will to live and succeed shaped him into a legendary fighter. But he’d spent his life fighting from a place of fear, growing superhero defenses to resist any attacks. I realized this is what he was trying to tell me on this trip. It wasn’t
me
he’d resisted back then, but the overwhelming emotions that came with a daughter showing up in his life.

He truly was more afraid of me than a plane losing its engine. He knew how to fight, but loving terrified him. Fortunately, he had passed on his gift of determination to me, and I used that same strength of will to attack him with love. He’d met his match, and I cracked him open with the same force he’d used to resist me. It was all becoming clear to me now that it had to be that way for reasons only our souls understood. Our healing proved the ancient wisdom that love always beats fear. But just because it’s meant to be, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be easy. Twenty years after finding Dad, I found the lost part of him by putting myself in his shoes and literally walking a day in his life. I finally had compassion for the reasons he had shut me out.

Forgiveness is a tunnel to love. Together, across the realms, we have healed each other through an incredible journey. Mission accomplished, I found Dad.

Acknowledgments

I am so grateful to the many people who helped me live out my story and share this book with the world. Above all, I want to thank my mother for always teaching me to follow my heart and that good will come. Her undying love and support, even in the most difficult of times, helped make me who I am today, and her support of this story is why I can tell it.

To my husband, Dennis, for being my best friend and sounding board throughout this process— thank you for always being willing to help me find the time for this journey. To my children, Helena and Julian, I love you more than the whole universe; you both are the joy that keeps me going even after long nights of writing.

To my brothers, Tracy, Stuart, and Peter, I am forever grateful for your always-open hearts, humor, hysterical memories and support of me telling the story of how I found Dad. To Soozie Sundlun, for her love for my father and support of all things spiritual, and the beautiful headshot she took for the book. To Marjorie Sundlun, for opening her heart and home so I could know my father. To Cousin Fenton, I miss you, and thank you for years of comic relief. Of course, to my father who became Dad by showing the world how to right a wrong, and always encouraged me to, “Tell ‘em the facts. Don’t sugar coat it!”

To my best friends, you are my sisters. To my cousin, Danielle, for car ride calls.

I want to thank the incredible team at Behler Publications for believing in this project and bringing this book to the world especially, Lynn Price, my awe-inspiring editor who honored me by publishing my first book, and challenged me to dig deeper and come from my heart all while making me laugh. Thank you for helping me tell my story in a way I hope will inspire others. To my literary agent, Steven Harris, and Gabriel Harris at CSG literary partners, for your guidance and belief in the importance of my story.

To Mika Brzezinski, for telling me I had to write a book and making me believe I could and should. Without you, this would all still be only a thought. To best-selling author Gabrielle Bernstein for showing me the path. To my long time television agent, Steve Dickstein, who watched my father and I grow over the years and generously offered his wisdom and sage advice on this project.

To my WFSB Channel Three and Meredith family, especially Dana Neves, Patience Hettrick, Klarn DePalma, and Paul Karpowicz for your encouragement always. To my
Better Connecticut
co-host, Scot Haney, for showing me how to bare it all and laugh about it, and our executive producer, Jamie Mascia, for reading the rough drafts and liking it enough to keep reading more. To Denise D’Ascenzo for sharing your wisdom during our green tea and chocolate talks, 444, the angels are always with us.

To Susan Campbell for her valuable class on memoir at the Mark Twain House, and author Diane Smith for sending me there. To Megan Poulin, my writing partner, for making Wednesdays writing night. To Doreen Fishman for helping me still my mind to uncover the real story I needed to tell. To Mariana Cayres, for keeping the little ones happy so I could write.

To Henry Baskin, I am forever indebted to you for helping me reunite with my father and providing me with valuable details needed to tell my story twenty years later. To Patti Goldstein, for your keen reflections. To G. Wayne Miller at the
Providence Journal
for your many great articles on my father and help with some of the photos in this book.

About Kara Sundlun

Kara Sundlun

Kara Sundlun is an Emmy Award winning television journalist. She anchors the news for WFSB-TV, the CBS affiliate in Connecticut and hosts the popular daytime talk show
Better Connecticut
. Her series “Kara’s Cures” is a mainstream guide to health and spirituality, she is also a contributor for the Huffington Post.

Kara was named “Best Reporter” by
Hartford Magazine
, “Top 40 under 40”in
Hartford Business Journal
and
Connecticut Magazine
, and is a board member for Dress for Success Hartford.

She is married to fellow news anchor Dennis House and mom to cherished children Helena and Julian.

To find out more about Kara and the amazing journey with her father, be sure to visit her webpage:

www.karasundlun.com

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