A routine speaking event at the 390th Memorial Museum, located inside the Pima Air & Space Museum, turned into an extraordinary reunion of shared history.
Author Maureen Buick and WWII veteran Walter Ram discovered they had a deeper connection than initially expected: Buick’s father and Ram were imprisoned in the same POW camp, and the same barracks, during World War II.
It all began when Glenn Rosati, director of volunteer services at the museum, stumbled upon Buick’s book ” Finding Bomb Boogie : A Daughter’s Search to Rediscover Her Father — the World War II Bomber Boy, Prisoner of War, and American Veteran,” which chronicles her father’s experiences as a WWII bomber pilot shot down and captured.
“I came to a part where she mentioned her father was a POW,” said Rosati. “I thought of Walter, one of our docents and a veteran, and I realized they might have crossed paths.”
Rosati sent Ram’s own memoir to Buick, setting off a remarkable chain of events.
Buick, upon reading Ram’s book, learned that her father not only shared the same camp, Stalag 17B in Austria, but also the same barracks with Ram.