Father's Homecoming

Late in my dad’s life, he shared the following homecoming story.

He had been stationed at an Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan, and was finally returning home. Alongside him on the ship were his wife and their blond-haired toddler, who had been born overseas. 

Waiting among the throngs of people welcoming returning troops were this little girl's grandparents—who had never met the striking, blue-eyed child.

But someone else was waiting too—a father who hadn’t seen his son since a divorce had severed contact when he was just a boy.

While overseas, my father had begun writing to his father that he hadn't seen. He wrote about being a pudgy kid suddenly uprooted from the sunny streets of Chico, California, and moved to a rural farm in Washington. 

He described being bullied by the stronger, leaner farm boys—and how he found the courage to face the bullies and learn how to make friends.

His letters told of college, marrying his sweetheart, and being sent to Okinawa in the aftermath of the Korean War. His little daughter was the highlight of those challenging years, and he mailed a photo of his family to his father.

As families reunited with tears, loud shouts, and waving arms, one man scanned the crowd for his son—then he saw him: a man who resembled himself at that age. He moved toward him, and then the eyes of the father met the eyes of the son.

My father said that in that moment, all the years of missing his dad—all the times playing catch on a tree-shaded street, and all the lost years—just evaporated. They embraced. Father and son were reunited. It was a new beginning.

In the way life sometimes works, this reunion would be the only time they’d see each other again. Months later, a sudden heart attack took the life of my grandfather. But the letters written overseas had reconnected them, and that last hug on American soil was the homecoming they both needed.