Julie Davis
jdavis@cherryroad.com
Note: Gerri Eisenhauer Larson and her children Allen Eisenhauer and Jan Eisenhauser Moore, spoke to a full house at the Fair Center in Syracuse on Sunday, Nov. 17, about Larson’s long search for answers about her father, Private William R. Walters, who died in Franch in World War II. This is their story, which has been featured on Flatwater Free Press, the CBS Evening and Weekend News, and in French media reports.
A celebration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of a small French village during World War II provided some long-sought answers for a Syracuse woman who has spent much of her life trying to learn about the father she never knew.
When residents of Grez-sur-Loing, a community located about 45 miles south of Paris in north-central France, began planning a summer commemoration of the events in August 1944, a town historian named Christophe Ligere began researching a document that another of the town residents had inherited from her grandfather.
It told of the drowning death of a young soldier who was unable to swim and who would not be rescued from the Loing River, which has a strong current beneath its smooth surface.
To show their appreciation to the soldier, they covered his body with flowers after it was recovered from the river, and the community held a memorial service for him before he was buried in a military cemetery nearby. In 1949, his body would be brought home.
That young soldier, U.S. Army Private William Roy Walters, had been born in Syracuse and his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, soon received a telegram informing her that he had died in France on Aug. 23, 1944.
The child, Gerri Walters Eisenhauer Larson, learned the details about her father’s death and the reverence Grez-sur-Loing has for him this past summer, when Ligere reached out in August to the Fusselman-Harvey-Allen Funeral Home and Funeral Director Cody Busekist through an online obituary for Larson’s first husband, James A. Eisenhauer, who died in 2008.
Ligere’s message, originally written in French, asked to be connected with any family of Private Walters, which Busekist did with a phone call and a forwarded email to Larson.
Larson’s children, Allen Eisenhauer and Jan Eisenhauer Moore, reread the message from Ligere and found an attachment indicating that Private Walters was to be a central part of the celebration. They quickly made plans, including the expedited shipment of two passports, for themselves and their mother to attend.
In September, Larson and her children traveled first to Paris, then took a train to Grez-sur-Loing, where they found one man—Ligere—waiting for them at the station.
He showed them around the town and took them to the river, which had to be crossed with rowboats in August 1944 because the German army had destroyed the bridge.
The rowboat carrying Private Walters and eight other soldiers was overloaded and capsized. He became entangled in plants beneath the river’s surface and was not pulled out of the water before he could be saved.
The family of the man who lent the rowboat to the Army came to meet Larson and her children, and his son, who is now 93, told Larson what he remembered of the day: flags and flowers and joy mixed with sadness over the loss of one young soldier.
French media interviewed Larson upon her arrival in Grez-sur-Loing, and she and her children, along with Ligere and other new French friends, watched the interview at the end of the first day of the celebration over a homecooked French supper. The second day of the celebration featured rides around the countryside in restored World War II military vehicles for Larson and her children.
Plans are underway for Ligere to visit southeast Nebraska, possibly next spring, to see where Private Walters grew up, and Larson and her children are invited back to Grez-sur-Loing next September for the dedication of a street named for Private Walters, as well as a memorial in the park so he is not forgotten by future generations.
