Discovering My Maternal Grandfather While Writing THE SILENT WOMEN

Very soon (Sept. 9) the long journey toward publication of my new novel will be complete. During the 7 years of research, I learned much about my maternal grandfather, Lt. Col. Franklin A. Kolyer. As with most men who've lived through and fought a war, stories of his active duty were buried, never discussed. As youths, my brother and I only knew he was in the army because he gave us some of his war medals after "inspecting" our bed making and passing muster (corners had to be square, a coin had to bounce off the mattress). I wonder now at that decision, to pass those medals along so casually to his grandchildren. Was it his quiet way of passing along part of himself and his history without attention and fanfare?

Frieda and Lt. Col. Franklin Kolyer, c. 1946

I learned more through fragmented stories, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings. How he was promoted and eventually awarded, among other medals, the prestigious Legion of Merit after the war ended. Sadly, I believe I sold it at a yard sale when I was about 12 to an older man who wasn't honest and should have educated me on what I was also casually discarding. I probably sold it to him for $1. I can still see him bending over the table, eyeing our history, wanting to take it for himself.

I learned from my mother that at the New York Port of Embarkation and Debarkation's Brooklyn Army Base on 58th St., part of his job in the Transportation Corps was to work with recruits, including WAVES. She recalls him sending home some who became pregnant. He was a conservative, so I'm sure that was a role he didn't enjoy! He also appeared to be high up and involved behind the scenes tangentially in transporting soldiers and anything else domestically and internationally (supplies, weapons, etc.). He had to have known about the Manhattan Project as the site that stored uranium ("Tube Alloy") was across from the Port, and that uranium needed to be moved to different Project locations by his personnel.

Port of Embarkation and Debarkation

I learned from my grandmother that he was "honored" with a rare invitation to witness an atomic bomb blast. That he was "in the stands and had to wear special glasses." I wonder about the somewhat exotic photo up top of the two of them, if it was taken on that occasion. When he would have been exposed to a tremendous amount of radiation despite being handed glasses (as if that was enough to stop radiation fallout that could blow across an ocean!).

I learned from my mother about an illness he had that she witnessed as a child, in keeping with radiation poisoning. He passed early of an aggressive cancer that often appeared in workers exposed to radiation.

We will never fully know. Most army records were destroyed in a 1973 fire, so his records are gone, but for one small receipt for a class he took after the war, when he was still on duty, and this newspaper clipping photo, among a few others.

Promotion Photo of Franklin to Lt. Col.

I was given the list of atomic bomb observers. It's long, and I haven't had time to find his name, but it's on my to do list.

I also discovered that Singer Sewing Machine Co. opened a store in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1955, when my grandfather was actively working for Singer and in charge of starting up stores around the country and the world. It's very likely he was involved. He would have known about Oak Ridge and its role during the war and that they could use such a store! He may even have traveled there to get it started.

In any case, I was so proud to learn of his service and how he bore the weight of keeping up morale, transporting home the dead and wounded, soldiers and officers he would have gotten to know a bit before embarking. He did go to Europe with other officers when the war ended to witness the damage and to oversee the transition. Here he is on Hitler's bombed balcony rubble, looking to me as if some of that dark weight was lifted (he had just fallen into a hole in that rubble so perhaps that knocked off some of that darkness and weight that he'd described in a letter to Frieda).

On the "Speer" Balcony Rubble, Old Reich Chancellery, Berlin 1945

Franklin and Frieda appear in Part Three of The Silent Women. RIP, Grandaddy. I still square my blanket corners!