{"id":20915,"date":"2024-05-29T00:06:42","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T06:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=20915"},"modified":"2024-05-27T16:07:34","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T22:07:34","slug":"another-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/29\/another-father\/","title":{"rendered":"ANOTHER FATHER?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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JoEllen Collins\u2014a longtime resident of the Wood River Valley, now residing in San Francisco\u2014 is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, a teacher, novelist, fabric artist, choir member and proud grandma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A<\/span>s I started watching the former HBO series, \u201cBand of Brothers,\u201d I recalled the time I experienced as a child during and after World War II. My father could not serve in the military as he had been born with severely twisted \u201cclub\u201d feet and survived several surgeries to reshape them. He became a director of the San Francisco USO and our wartime neighborhood warden. I watched city blackouts from our home high on a hill off 19th Avenue. As a little girl, I often sat on my daddy\u2019s lap during his work as a radio announcer and asked listeners to contribute to the war effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I am presented with a remarkable gathering involving relatives of Markley, my biological father, whom I didn\u2019t learn of until a few years ago.\u00a0At that time, I lived the miracle of finding, meeting, and loving my birth mother\u2019s son\u2014my half-brother\u2014and biological relatives in Oklahoma. This has proven to be life altering, acquiring a \u201cnew\u201d family who has warmly welcomed me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year I received an unexpected call from another half-brother born several years after I was. I have now been invited to a reunion of cousins in my biological father\u2019s children\u2019s generation. We will meet in Oklahoma shortly after this column is published.\u00a0Most of my new relatives are not, of course, in his generation, but they knew him as an uncle and will have some tales to tell. I have learned about some of his life and seen pictures of him, both in non-military garb and military uniforms, along with some of his 11 siblings raised on a small farm in Texas. You can well imagine that I will meet many from that family.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have learned from several sources about Markley. He posed with brothers in their WWII uniforms in 1945, and military records show that he was considered a hero\u2014a paratrooper in Europe who was a scout for the troops\u2019 excursions. After a parachute failure, he broke his spine in three places. I am interested in more than what I see in the few words in his military record. Ironically, he spent a long time of recovery in the hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco and, at that time, my family and I lived not very far from where he was recuperating.\u00a0He returned to Texas, married, and when that marriage failed, his son was adopted by his ex-wife\u2019s new husband.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been blessed with the parents who raised me. I felt beloved as a child and believe that nobody could ever have meant more to me than Ted and Helen Gifford, my adoptive parents.\u00a0Actually, I was never interested in exploring my genetic roots, adored my mom and dad, and only pursued my DNA in order to learn which genetic qualities my grandchildren may have inherited.<\/span><\/p>\n

Come Memorial weekend, I\u2019ll have a clearer sense of the other people I may have known as family.\u00a0I am excited at the prospect.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I started watching the former HBO series, \u201cBand of Brothers,\u201d I recalled the time I experienced as a child during and after World War II. My father could not serve in the military as he had been born with severely twisted \u201cclub\u201d feet and survived several surgeries to reshape them. He became a director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-on-lifes-terms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20916,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20915\/revisions\/20916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}