Love, Bill: Finding My Father through Letters from World War II

Long before she became a museum curator, Jan Krulick-Belin curated memories... photographs and mementos of her father, who died in 1960 when she was just six. Her mother rarely spoke about him again, until a year before her own death in 2002, when she gave Jan a box of nearly one hundred love letters he had written between January 1942 and September 1944 while he served in the Army Air Corps in North Africa and Italy. Not reading them until five years later, they revealed a treasure trove of information about her parents' relationship years before they eventually married... and brought back to life the father she thought she'd lost forever.

What follows is the true story of the author's emotional and life-changing pilgrimage of the heart to find and reclaim the father she barely knew.

The letters lead Jan on an extraordinary journey following her father's actual footsteps during the war years. Each letter evokes another time and place, while a series of amazing twists, turns, uncanny coincidences, and the kindness of strangers lead to unexpected discoveries from Morocco to Paris to upstate New York. The adventure comes full circle when Jan reconnects with the Jewish-Moroccan family that provided a lonely soldier a feeling of home, fulfilling a wish unearthed in one of his letters.

Along the way, she learns about her parents' great love story... about the war in North Africa... about the horrific fate of the Jews in Morocco, Germany, and France while connecting with her own Jewish roots. She makes a lasting connection with a family a continent away. And most importantly, she discovers the man she thought she would never have the opportunity to know.

Love, Bill: Finding My Father through Letters from World War II brings a bygone era to life, but is also a testament to the enduring power of determination, love, family, and the unbreakable bond between fathers and daughters.

The book's design and organization took its cue from the letters written by the author's father. Each "chapter" heading begins as the letters begin, with a place and date. The theme of "letters" is carried out throughout the book--from the letters she carried home from school on the day her father died, to the love letters written by her father to her mother, to the varied correspondence that traces her extensive research and resulting friendships around the world, and finally, the letter written to her father at the end of the book.

The quotes introducing each "Part" of the book were drawn from the author's favorite books, movies, and inspirational sayings. They were carefully chosen to set the scene for the following section.

The book is also about journeys--the ones we travel physically as well as the ones we make within ourselves. The book is also about getting to know our parents and about understanding our own family legacy. The author also encourages us to trace our own family's military history by including resources in the Appendix, or exploring the reader's own family memorabilia, like love letters, journals or photo albums. They are rich in clues to who we are.

One of the unexpected outcomes of the author's journey was in the process of finding her own family legacy she wound up touching the lives of complete strangers, who have not only become like family to her now, but helped put their broken families back together.

The book shows us that sometimes we learn more about our own heritage, in this case, Jewish heritage, by learning the stories of our parents and grandparents. Only then, do they become our own reality.

Jan Krulick-Belin is a museum and art consultant, and art and jewelry historian with nearly forty years of experience at such institutions as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Denver Art Museum, Beaumont (Texas) Art Museum, and Smithsonian Institution. Retired as Director of Education at the Phoenix Art Museum, she still works with museums, art organizations, and private collectors, and serves as guest curator at the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum in Phoenix. 

Jan has a bachelor's degree in art history from the State University of New York, Binghamton, and a master's degree in museum education from George Washington University in Washington, DC. She grew up in New York City, and currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona.

She drew on her research skills to delve into her past, creating Love, Bill, as a labor of love that fulfilled her father's dream as well as her own.