Spy Dad

Dad left me two items when he died. One was a box of letters he had mailed home from the time he went into the army until he was discharged. The other was an envelop with letters from a woman who I shall call Marcia Smith. The letters dad sent home are interesting and when I read them it is sort of like visiting with him when he was 25 years old. Those letters will comprise a section of my blog at a later date.

The letters from Marcia however were the letters I had waited several years to review. There were about 12 letters. They were mailed the first of each month to Dad while he was in Korea. The letters are a little newsy, nothing romantic, just friendly little tid bits of information from back home. Marcia however lived in Eldon, Missouri and Dad of course was from Independence. Marcia was doing something very common back then, sort of a patriotic thing - writing the boys who were fighting the bad guys to keep them remembering what they were fighting for.

My name was mentioned a couple of times in the letters but mostly just in response to letters Dad had apparently sent her. For the most part the letters were humdrum, poorly written many times, awkward sentence structures, but I guess for a soldier far away any news about the home front is welcome. So why might you ask yourself had I been looking forward to reading these letters for several years.

When I retired from the military Dad told me that he had a box of letters with my name on it and when he died he wanted me to open it and read the contents. He then went on to tell me that there was a series of letters in the box from a Marcia Smith of Elden, Missouri and I was to pay special attention to those letters. Marcia he said was his "handler." He went on to tell me a story.

After receiving some special training by Naval Intelligence, Dad and some other men were sent to different parts of Korea. Their job if they happen to be captured was to supply information through letters handled by the Red Cross as to what was really happening in the POW camps. The information the army had been receiving about those camps were incomplete and confusing and together with the fact that there had been fewer escapes from prison camps than in any other war, they wanted to know why.

They gave him an address of Marcia Smith, 221 Elm Street, Eldon, Missouri. After he arrived in Korea he was supposed to write her, send information in code to keep from losing the skill he had committed to memory, and she in turn would write back in code answering questions he might have asked and asking new ones. They continued their correspondance for a year.

Dad said that the last letter he sent to Marcia said he was returning home the following month and would really like to meet her. She responded that she did not think that would be a very good idea because the boy friend she had now was the jealous type and it would just cause problems. Dad said he wrote back and told her he understood and it had been nice visiting with her and would send her a Christmas card or some such thing. She wrote one more letter back and said that that would not be a good idea either but she would make it a point to keep track of him and if she ever needed anything she would contact him. Dad dropped the issue, will almost.

When he got back to Independence one of the first things he did was to borrow a car and drive to Eldon. He found that 221 Elm Street did not exist.

Twenty years went by Dad was a chief flight instructor for Wilson Flying Service. One of his students was a local secret service agent who wanted to learn to fly so it would be easier to transfer to the border patrol. He said the service was sort of boring anymore. The agent said he just stood around and watched people and made pointless contacts for other agenicies. After one of the lesson the agent said he had a friend that wanted to meet Dad. Sure Dad said, where and when. The agent told dad that the parking lot at Wilson's would be fine and how about midnight that night.

Dad was a little taken aback, but went along with the plan. Dad did not recall or choose to tell me the conversation that took place that night but the up shot was that the guy he met asked Dad if he would be interested in running an airport for the firm he represented. Dad said he might be but where was it exactly he was talking about. The guy told Dad he could not tell him right then, but it was some place in southeast Asia. The guy told him they did not need an answer right then but did in a day or two. He would be in touch. "Oh, by the way," the guy said in parting, "Marcia says hi."

Dad turned down the job and never mentioned anything about it to anyone except my grandfather and me.

At Dad's funeral there were two retired FBI agents as honorary pallbearers and some flowers from some one that only signed the card, "Thanks, MS"