Stay with me here.....maybe someone can help me out....
There is a diner in the little town of Dover called The Dish. On the wall leading to the bathrooms is a long string hanging between two nails. On that string are old photos attached with clothespins. I love looking at those old photos and thought I was clever enough to replicate the look at home. I still have a lot of old family photos and thought I would dress the look up by using a ribbon rather than a string. Umm, it doesn't look as quaint as the string of photos at The Dish.
While looking for just the right photos of my family, I found for probably the 1000th time, old photos and letters of/from a man named Abelardo Balderrama. They are addressed to both of my parents and the early letters have salutations of Mr. and Mrs. Lucas. They range in date from 1943 to 1945. The photos and letters were sent during Abelardo's time in the Army during WWII.
Abelardo is/was a very polite, well written, nice man....I can absolutely tell from his letters. He had a great sense of humor and was obviously fond of my parents. I can also tell from his responses that there are a lot of missing letters to my folks......I received your three letters and I have only written two back. I'm sorry.
Some excerpts from his letters will give you a flavor of Abelardo's personality.
Am I happy today! Yesterday I graduated from school and received my aerial gunners wings along with a Staff Sergeants rating. That means a paycheck of $96 a month plus flying pay. Boy, oh boy!
I am currently stationed at Tullahoma, Tennessee. I know what Noah felt when he saw it rain for 40 days and nights. The town is just a wide place in the road.
I am currently stationed at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It rains down here every night and the mosquitoes are awful. The women all wear shorts because of the heat during the day. Sometimes I wish I was a mosquito.
It's difficult to write anything interesting from here......but I cannot so excuse my letters if they are laconic and uninteresting. I have also felt weak in the knees at times....but so far I have been more than lucky. This was written from Italy 1944.
So.....I was telling Steve about Abelardo and he said: Just go online and look the guy up. You should be able to find out all kinds of stuff about him.
Sorry, Steve. Not so easy. I have spent days trying to find any line...straight, curved, broken, potholed...anything that would lead me to find out what happened to Abelardo Balderrama after that last letter in early 1945.
I was able to find his enlistment stats on a government site. I have his Army serial number, birth state, enlistment place, year of birth and the fact that he was a high school graduate and was a waiter before he enlisted. This leads me to think he met my mom and dad at Pat's cafe where my mom worked....this is also the place where I think my mom and dad met. Perhaps Abelardo was a waiter there. He also mentions in one of the letters another woman, Kay Chapman, who was a good friend of my mother's and worked with her at Pat's.
Most of the sites I found online want $$ to search for someone. Of course, there is no promise that a $29.95 search price (for one person only) will actually turn up anything about my Abelardo Balderrama. I was tempted to join the Ancestry site. So, I called my cousin in Virginia that had used that site to find my mother's family thinking she was still enrolled...but she no longer has a subscription.
I think Abelardo was a handsome, intelligent man. I like to think he married when he was discharged (I hope he was discharged and not killed in the war). I hope he had a family and that there might be children, grandchildren and great grandchildren looking for something of their loved one online and they will stumble upon this post. I would love to give Abelardo Balderrama's family these photos and letters. Anyone out there remember Abelardo Balderrama?


