King's Corner: Mother’s Day
King's Corner column for May 9, 2025
D-Day, Normandy, France, Omaha Beach. Third wave. Running out of the landing craft into an ocean where bloated bodies of soldiers from previous waves are still floating. Getting onto the beach, then heading up the steep hill towards the concrete bunkers filled with German snipers. Halfway up the hill a bullet passed through Robert Mark King’s – my father – fourth knuckle of his hand and into his hip. At first he didn’t realize he was wounded. But as they secured their landing, he was sent for medical assistance.
Eventually this would be rewarded with a purple heart. It would also mean losing his mother for seven years.
At the beginning of the war many lined up to sign up. Fudging his young age, Mark cleared every hurdle until the eye test. They were not accepting recruits who needed glasses. Outside he ran into the parents of another boy who were offering a sizeable amount of money to anyone willing to sign up under their son’s name while he safely went to Canada. The next day Mark was back and listened while approaching the eye test. Everyone was asked to read the same line, so he memorized it. He emerged signed up as the other boy.
By the time he finished basic training they’d realized who he really was, and they got him the glasses he needed. But in the background the paperwork was a different story.
Mark’s mother Julia was among many who received letters after D-Day saying their son had been shot. But when she contacted them for further news, and they had no other records of him, she assumed he died. After getting past the shock, she remarried and moved from New Jersey to Minnesota. She didn’t know what happened to him, and he didn’t know what happened to her.
Mark’s army unit pushed through France, into Belgium and Luxemburg, and then into Germany where, 366 days after D-Day, they celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day on May 8th, two days before Mother’s Day. But by later that year, when he returned stateside, she was gone.
How many times do you think, “If only I’d handled that differently”? How often have you had unexpected consequences that you never saw coming? How often do you think, “Oh Lord, what do I do now?”
Through friends he found she’d moved somewhere west. Mark found work in Rapid City, South Dakota, and spent his evenings feeding coins into a telephone box. He eventually learned her new married last name and, over time, called anyone in several states with that name. Several years later, in April, he phoned a doctor in Minneapolis who said he had a brother Clarence with a wife named Julia, and she did have a son who died in the war.
He called the number the doctor gave him and said, “Hello Mom, this is Bobby”. She hung up.
He called back and said, “Please don’t hang up, just listen to me.” He then told her stories from the past that only they would know. Of him locking himself in an apartment bathroom that led to the fire department being called. Of them living on a farm and the antics he got up to. She realized it was him, saying, “Is this you? Is this really you?” And eventually his mother began to believe, and began to hope.
“Where are you?”
“Right now I’m working on the Fort Rendel Dam outside Sioux City IA. I’m finishing in a week and want to come visit you.” She was crying and wanted him to call every day until he came.
Reconciliation is a rare and wonderful gift. We’ve all had people who’ve left our lives for one reason or another. We’ve had relationships break, or circumstances change, or time and distance have taken their toll. We’ve had reason to believe that break could never heal. That those circumstances are beyond change.
But it’s amazing what God can heal and restore if you ask. Sometimes the change needs to start in you, through forgiveness of others, or through being willing to trust God despite your situation. Take the time to ask how you, and your situation, can be redeemed.
Mark came to Clarence and Julia’s apartment in St Paul, Minnesota, and knocked on the door. They answered the door, Julia looked at him and said, “Oh My God” and passed out.
They took her in on the couch. She awoke crying, and gave him a big hug. She then stood up and gave him a big slap across the face. He was stunned. She started to give him another slap and he caught her arm asking, “Why are you doing this?”
“That’s for not contacting me all these years and letting me think you’re dead!”
They all dissolved into a mixture of crying, laughing, and every emotion in the range from grief to hope to joy. He son had come back from the dead. Coincidentally it was the beginning of May, just in time for Mother’s Day.
