Finding Bill
by
Henrietta T. O'Neill
Copyright 2011 Henrietta T. O'Neill,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0219-2
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Prologue
We met quite by chance at a National Farmers Union gathering in Toronto. My mother was there because she was a staunch supporter of the Union. My brother Morris was there because he had to drive. I was there because I was curious.
During the course of the meeting, I was treated to the sight of a young man standing up to ask some very pointed questions of the politician in attendance. From afar I admired his intelligence and his clean-cut look.
That evening I managed to meet the young stranger. When he introduced himself to my mother, she asked if his surname, O'Neill, was spelled with a double “L”. It was. Did he know a Bill O'Neill who had been in the Canadian army and in Holland during W.W.II?
My mother, I knew, was thinking back to her world in 1945 and I did not need to be reminded how important the O'Neill name was to our family. Although this particular O'Neill's answer was no, his name guaranteed that (even without his good looks )I would be interested in him.
Joe O'Neill proved to be an avid storyteller and spent much of the evening regaling me with anecdotes about childhood escapades. I was soon absorbed in his world, one that was both fresh and familiar. Joe told about growing up on a farm near Lucan, Ontario as the third child in a Roman Catholic family of ten. Along with his siblings – six boys and three girls, he helped out on the farm. Joe often watched his parents struggle to keep their family fed. In spite of the hard work and low economic expectations, he wanted to continue to farm. As he spoke, the storyteller and the listener learned they had much in common.
After a brief long-distance relationship, we married, but for Joe, some understanding of how important the O’Neill name was to me, came more gradually. He began to tease me about marrying him for his name while I, undeterred, would insist that he had married me to provide himself with a captive audience for his stories. Thus, Joe was drawn into the family history, ensuring that the den Otter-O’Neill saga, which began before I was born, would continue into a new generation.
Today, after six children and over thirty years, our marriage survives, but one question still begs resolving: “Did I marry the man or the name?”
This book is a journey through time back to the European front in WWII. It chronicles the parallel stories of a young Dutch couple and a Canadian soldier… and the remarkable destiny that is created when their paths briefly cross.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot
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