My Turn: Far from an ‘unknown soldier’

By MAGGIE HAIGIS

Published: 05-28-2023 10:37 AM

Before she died, my mother, Nan Haigis, gave our family a gift beyond measure. She wrote a memoir of her only sibling, Robert “Bob” Vatcher, who died in wartime, June 29, 1944 at age 25 over England while flying as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

He is the uncle we never physically knew, but he was never forgotten and through my Mom’s writing we did get to know him well.

She began through a class at the Greenfield Public Library led by former Recorder reporter, Deb Parker. Speaking of an oil portrait done from his picture she wrote, “I have told you some things about Bob, but I want to tell you more so that maybe you will feel that he has been part of your life. I want you to feel comfortable with this 25-year-old Air Force officer. Knowing more about him, I hope you will pass all this feeling on so that he won’t end up a forgotten stranger in a basement or attic.”

With humor and a sense of history, she told of growing up in a small Long Island town, his decision to leave Pratt Art School in New York City to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, the war years, his death in his aircraft and the aftermath. It is poignant and important information. It is about a happy childhood in a simpler time and the catastrophic era of war and it is the story of my uncle, never an “unknown soldier” to us.

True to his epitaph, “To live in the heart of those we love, is not to die.”

Because of this story, there will be no attic or basement storage and no forgetting. Already my son, Erik, says he wants the portrait.

The portrait, his artwork and the book of memories is, hopefully, a gift for generations to come. By writing his memoir, the information is also of my mother and her parents, grandparents and other relatives and it tells stories that would have otherwise been lost.

We never know when someone in our immediate family or future generation might take an interest in genealogy. If our memories are recorded, family history will live on and a picture will not be of an “unknown” or just a line on a family tree. The history, rather, could be cherished parts that make a family whole.

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Maggie Haigis is a resident of Bernardston.

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