Earl Parker was in love with Viola Shrader, one of the prettiest and most popular girls in town. He was a country boy who grew up on a beef farm in the rolling hills of Virginia. He loved baseball and hunting, but he loved Viola more. They married in 1940. Times were hard, money was tight and Earl wanted to provide for his new wife so he joined the National Guard for “a dollar a day.”
The world as Earl and Viola knew it changed forever on when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 propelling the United States into the Second World War. Suddenly the National Guard training became much more serious and intense. Earl was rarely able to return home and see his beloved Viola. As Adolf Hitler continued his relentless assault across Europe, Earl and his company learned that they were going overseas. Viola had something very important that she needed to tell her husband and she wanted to do it in person. She made a desperate, ill-advised trip to New York to try to see him before they were shipped to England. But she couldn’t get close to him. The camp was sealed; she couldn’t even leave a message telling him that she was expecting their first child.
Earl didn’t learn that he would be a father until he arrived in Britain. Convinced that the baby would be a boy, he and Viola agreed via letters to name him Danny. When he received the letter informing him that his baby had been born, Viola shared that the baby’s name was indeed Danny. That was the name of his baby daughter.
Earl was anxious for the war to be over so he could go home and see his little girl. In December of 1943 he wrote his baby a letter: “Dear Danny, Maybe Santa Claus will bring you lots of things if you are a good little girl. I sure hope I will be there next Christmas. I don’t suppose you will know your Daddy when he comes home. I don’t believe it will take us long to get acquainted. Don’t tell Mother that I said this, but I love her a lot and think she is real sweet. I wish I could be there with you and Mother tonight. With all my love, Daddy.”
Earl wrote home at least once a week, but as June 1944 approached the letters became infrequent and eventually stopped. Everyone knew that the inevitable invasion was imminent. Earl would be among the first men to hit the beach at Normandy. He knew there would be massive casualties. Some were even referring to his company as the “Suicide Wave.” On June 4 the soldiers boarded the British troopship the Empire Javelin. As it crossed the choppy English Channel in the middle of the night Earl stood at the railing with some of his hometown friends. “It was a solemn thing,” a friend recalled. “We sat around and talked about what we would do when we got back home.” Suddenly, Earl pulled out a picture of his sixteen-month-old daughter, Danny and said: “If I could just see her once, I wouldn’t mind dying.”
Earl’s friend cried almost sixty years later as he recalled the story.
Danny went overseas in 1997 and visited the beaches of Normandy. She carried her father’s dog tags, his purple heart, and the letter he wrote to her in December of 1943. She couldn’t visit his grave because they never found his body, but she stood before a wall in the Garden of Missing and among the 1,557 names she found the name of her daddy, Earl Parker.
Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day. We will honor all the brave men and women who have served our nation with valor and courage. And we will remember men like Earl Parker who never had the privilege of holding his baby girl named Danny. Because of men like Earl Parker, we continue to be free.
(Earl Parker was one of “The Bedford Boys” as chronicled by Alex Kershaw, 2003)
