A Love Story with a Little Heartbreak Read online

A LOVE STORY

  WITH

  A LITTLE HEARTBREAK

  Thomas John Dunker

  This book and others by Thomas J. Dunker are also available as paperbacks.

  Cover Art: © [email protected]

  Copyright © 2009 by Thomas J. Dunker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgment to Stewart Bick, M.D. for his medical counsel and enlightening insights; to Jerry Kurth and Gina Lake, who provided some details of this story; and to Linnea Barnes, who provided encouragement and support throughout the writing of this story along with some great insights.

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  To my mother

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  CHAPTER ONE

  It was at that very moment, the moment that Connie altered the placement of a few strands of her blonde hair, when her eyes locked into the eyes of the image staring back at her in the mirror, her image. The image had an intensity she wasn’t feeling, and suddenly it spoke to her, although her own face remained perfectly still. It said, “You will never see me again.”

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  CHAPTER TWO

  In late 1945, euphoria over our nation’s victory in the war hung in the air still, even though the country was focused on working hard to move forward with a steady rhythm of normalcy and promise and a single-minded commitment to return to the goings on of life as it should be—as the soldiers on the battlefields had dreamed it would be if they were victorious. That euphoria lingered was entirely understandable, knowing that only a couple of years earlier the future of America had been in doubt—for that matter, the very existence of America. Yes! The threat of Nazi dominion loomed for several years in the mid-forties, and prospects became even scarier when the diabolical union between the Nazis and Imperial Japan resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  By 1946, a pronounced vitality had returned, a spring in people’s steps could be seen once again and an effervescent joy over the return to sanity. People were making new lives, making out, and making babies. You have to know that all this “making” activity had been on hold during the years the nation was at war. Now it was in full swing, and love permeated the air along with that euphoria.

  But what do I know? Not much really. I wasn’t around in the forties. I wasn’t born until 1951, which now seems like as long ago as World War Two, or even World War One. Going much farther back than thirty years puts everything on the same plane in my memory as simply “a long time ago,” just like I would say the Civil War was a long time ago. Of course, I didn’t have to experience the Civil War to know about it; that’s what history books are for. Even better than history books, at least for the kind of history I’m writing about here, is word of mouth.

  This story is, in part, hearsay. Like I said, I didn’t exist in the forties, but I learned a lot about people who did live in that period because I talked to them years later, some of them anyway. Mostly, I learned about that time from my mother because this story is her story, which I have now told often enough that I feel I was there with her in 1946 and the years that followed, even though I didn’t really make it onto the scene until 1951, as I said—if coming out of the birth canal can be called making it onto the scene. Of course, many of the blanks were filled in by others who were firsthand witnesses to the events, so that might explain why it may seem that I know a lot more than what you might think. And the rest—well, that’s what imaginations are for, right? I’m pretty good at filling in the blanks.

  I have a really good imagination, something I’ve always been thankful for. And I can tell a really good story, something a lot of my friends have been thankful for. This story has had an effect on everyone I have ever told it to, so I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t affect you too.

  Personally, I’ve known about much of this story since I was a teenager in the sixties because I made it a point to be my family’s historian, something of a family snoop, since I was self-appointed and assumed the role, essentially without anyone’s awareness or knowledge of that appointment.

  You see, writing a book is an interesting endeavor into the unknown. Outlines help, of course, but in my humble experience, what often makes it onto the printed page is something never foreseen by the writer. Without getting too ahead of myself, as I have mentioned, the adventure you’re about to read is my mother’s story. Her name was Connie Ortlieb. Her story is one that has been my own personal source of courage over the years. I got my courage from my mother, most of it anyway. She’s the one who taught me to pick myself up from a fall and get on with life. I’ve fallen many times, but none matched what she went through. Courage is a wonderful, wonderful thing, and it may actually exist in all of us, although I’m not absolutely sure about that. Some know it is in them and some don’t until the moment they have to call on it. But I digress.

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