Syracuse, Nebraska — Gerri Eisenhauer’s father, Army Pvt. William Walters, was shipped off to World War II before she was even born.
In 1944, her family got back his body and a U.S. government letter that only said he had died somewhere in France.
“I just always wondered, where he died, how he died, it was just a little part of a puzzle piece that was missing in my life,” Eisenhauer told CBS News.
For decades, the family was resigned to the fact that it would never know. That is, until a few months ago.
Eisenhauer was at her home in Syracuse, Nebraska, this past summer when she received a message from Christophe Ligere, a French historian, from the small village of Grez-sur-Loing, in central France. The message read, in part, “On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of France, we pay tribute to Private William Walters.”
Ligere had found Walters’ name in the diary of an eyewitness to his death, and he immediately felt like he had to find Walters’ family. Ligere conducted some research and located the Walters’ family tree, and from there he found the online obituary of another relative of Eisenhauer, through which he left her that message.