Tara Hall: 0:02

I first heard about him in high school during Veterans Day. They were like, oh, we're going to put up some stars and stuff in the cafeteria to you know, kind of just honor these men that died. And I was telling my mom about it and she said, oh well, you know, you have a great uncle that was killed in the war. And I was like what I do?

Crista Cowan: 0:27

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history, and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. Back in 2001, when September 11th happened, my brother was in the Air Force at the time and almost immediately he was deployed undisclosed, which meant for weeks we had no idea where he was, and that little glimpse of just a few weeks of uncertainty was enough to give me a heart full of empathy for parents and family members who have lived for years without knowing what happened to their own military service men and women.

Crista Cowan: 1:23

My guest today is Tara Hall. She's a colleague of mine at Ancestry and a while ago she shared a World War II story about her grandfather's brother, Norman, and what happened to him. As we approach Memorial Day, I thought it was an appropriate time to share this story and maybe to give us all a moment to reflect on the lives of the servicemen and women who paid the ultimate price. Well, I'm so glad you're here to have this conversation. I would love to know a little bit more about how you got started in family history.

Tara Hall: 1:54

Yeah. So my mom would just kind of regale me with stories of her grandmother. She was born in Wales and I've, ever since then, I've just become obsessed with the country of Wales. It's amazing. And she would just tell me about all the stories of her growing up. And you know, right before I started college, she left Wales when she was about 19 and she decided to come to America by way of Canada for a year. And so it was just. You know, I was thinking about how brave she was to leave her country by herself and go to a strange country where she had a few cousins, but, you know, not not very many. And so I was like you know, if she could do it, I can actually totally go to Idaho for college, you know.

Crista Cowan: 2:53

Did you know your great grandmother?

Tara Hall: 2:55

I didn't she. I never met her, but I Did your mom know her.

Tara Hall: 2:58

Yes, yes, so your mom wasn't just passing on stories she had heard, she knew, her very well and she became a nurse and she married later in life and you know, it was just I could relate to her on so many levels and I. That was what really got me started. And then I eventually, when I went up to college, I spent a lot of time in the library. I was not studying, I was in the family history center and, um that, that first semester, I was hooked. I just absolutely hooked.

Crista Cowan: 3:33

I went to school in Rexburg. Yeah, I went to school in Rexburg too, and my first college job was working in that library teaching people how to use the computers. That's awesome.

Crista Cowan: 3:44

That's so fun. Yeah, that's. It was a good experience for me there, but I had some of the same feelings right, that whole like leaving home for the first time. I was the oldest child and so nobody had ever left home in my family before, so it was a kind of new experience for me. And and yeah, you do think about, there are people who've been doing this for centuries.

Tara Hall: 4:02

Yeah, and they survived. And I'm here, yeah, and it's only a few states away. It's not like it was.

Crista Cowan: 4:10

Across an ocean.

Tara Hall: 4:11

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 4:11

Yeah, and you're going to see your parents at Christmas, exactly.

Tara Hall: 4:15

Never again, exactly yeah.

Crista Cowan: 4:17

Yeah, did she ever see her parents again?

Tara Hall: 4:19

Her mother. She went and got her. They went over to my grandmother was three, my grandma, her daughter was three and they went on an ocean liner over to Wales, got my, her mom and brought her back Her dad she never saw again. Unfortunately he passed away.

Crista Cowan: 4:40

Then where did they end up settling?

Tara Hall: 4:42

In Salt Lake, like Murray area.

Crista Cowan: 4:46

And you knew your grandma.

Tara Hall: 4:48

Oh yes.

Crista Cowan: 4:48

Is she still alive?

Tara Hall: 4:49

She passed away in November of 22.

Crista Cowan: 4:52

So it sounds like you've been surrounded by family stories growing up, yes, and then, when you went to college, you had this opportunity to dive into your own family history a little bit. Is there a particular story that captured your attention or your imagination, that you were able to discover that wasn't kind of passed down?

Tara Hall: 5:08

That wasn't passed down, I just had this ancestor. It's not even a direct ancestor, so but you know how names just kind of bug you sometimes and they come back to you. Like you know, I just couldn't find anything on this guy. But find a grave little plug, find a grave really helped me kind of piece that story together, because you know, with the 1890 census loss in Oklahoma, yeah it, it was hard to piece together but I eventually was able to find and that was like my first success story.

Crista Cowan: 5:46

Yeah, that one is always exciting because it's kind of a thing Like you start putting the puzzle pieces together and when it finally clicks you're like, oh, I can do this.

Tara Hall: 5:55

I really am like capable of doing, and you know I made a lot of mistakes back then but we're relying on CD-ROMs and floppy disks. Those were the days.

Crista Cowan: 6:05

You know I made a lot of mistakes back then, but we were relying on CD-ROMs and floppy disks at that time. Those were the days I know. Yeah, I still remember the first time my parents gave me I don't even remember which birthday it was, I could probably figure it out if I did the math but they gave me the entire 1880 census on CD in like a giant CD case, and I was so excited and my siblings were like what, why is this exciting?

Crista Cowan: 6:28

And I nerded out and then I proceeded to spend endless sleepless nights just putting CD after CD into my CD-ROM to go through those names. I mean, I had lived through the days of microfilm so I understood, like, the tedious nature of searching. But those switching of the CD-ROMs like that and having to wait for it to load, those were the days Right. So lovely that it is all now just available on Ancestry with a quick search. Yes, that's awesome. So you work at Ancestry now.

Tara Hall: 7:00

I do how long have you been there? Three and a half years.

Crista Cowan: 7:03

Okay, and you're in. You're on the content team. Yes, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Tara Hall: 7:08

So I believe it's the same team that you started out on, um, uh, the QA, qc and indexing team. Um, I think back then they were separate but we combined. But I'm a senior specialist for the indexing side and I'm able to be in cool records all day and just look at the accuracy of our indexing partners.

Crista Cowan: 7:33

So that's amazing, that is. That was my very first job at Ancestry, for about six months, just reviewing the indexes and making sure they were done correctly by our keying partners.

Tara Hall: 7:43

One of your previous guests, suzanne Adams. She was the one that made me apply for this job. I was like oh, I don't know, I don't know. She's like just do it, just apply. I was like okay.

Crista Cowan: 7:56

So as you look at, records come through all day, every day, as your job. Is there any like record collection on Ancestry that you've been excited about? Is there any?

Tara Hall: 8:04

record collection on Ancestry that you've been excited about. I kind of nerd out about parish registers in the UK, particularly Welsh parishes. I don't know they're so fascinating, especially the poor law records in the UK.

Tara Hall: 8:21

Can you explain what those are. So poor law records are the people that lived in parishes that were in need of assistance from the parish. A handful of my ancestors were actually in the poor law records, and so there will be entries that say, like for Priscilla Williams a coat or a blanket. And then there's an entry that says, basically, we're going to tear down the house that they lived in or that they live currently live in, so they have to leave. I'm not sure what happened about that, but it's really sad to read those entries. But it's also fascinating to it adds just a whole new layer.

Crista Cowan: 9:04

Yeah, and you think about the fact that that was their, their religious belief and their faith about the community taking care of the community. And that was just a record of how they did that.

Tara Hall: 9:14

Yeah, yes, it's fascinating.

Crista Cowan: 9:16

That's really cool. So when you think about the role of contents, right parish poor law records, for me it's census records all day, every day right.

Crista Cowan: 9:26

Like every time a new census comes out, I'm so excited about it. You know I've been through three census releases of the US census. The most recent census Ancestry published was the 1921 England census. And to be able to go through those records and particularly that 1921 England census is, I think, meaningful for me because of the fact that World War I had just ended and the 1918 influenza pandemic had just swept through the world and you see a lot of women who are widowed and children who are orphaned or left with just a single mother and kind of the whole shift in society after a war.

Crista Cowan: 10:05

And so I love census records because they they show that particular aspect of this snapshot in time and you realize what's happened since the 10 years previous. So I love that. Talking about you know a world war right, you have, you have a particular ancestor relative. That is a story that you've shared with me and that I would love for you've shared with me and that I would love for you to share with everyone else, just because it's so moving when you think about the stories that come out of wartime and then how that has ripple effects for generations. So tell us about who this person is and maybe even when you first heard of this story.

Tara Hall: 10:44

Yes, so this is my great uncle Norman.

Crista Cowan: 10:47

Mom's side or dad's side?

Tara Hall: 10:48

My mom's side, Norman Harris, and he, he was my grandpa's brother. I first heard about him in high school during Veterans Day. They were like, oh, we're going to put up some stars and stuff in the cafeteria to, you know, kind of just honor these men that died. And I was telling my mom about it and she said, oh well, you know, you have a great uncle that was killed in the war. And I was like what?

Crista Cowan: 11:19

I do, and did you know your grandpa?

Tara Hall: 11:22

Oh, yes, yes, Very much, and he never talked about it and did you know your grandpa?

Tara Hall: 11:25

Oh, yes, yes, very much, and he never talked about it. Never talked about it. Yeah, so much regret, not asking more and pushing in his later years. But I didn't know any better. But I was like, ok, he was killed in the war and you know, she was just telling me the stuff that she knew and so he's always just kind of been this enigma. Was there a point that you decided, oh, I want to learn more, or did it just kind of come out over time? It has come out over time. I most recently like the last few years have been and it was really with a release of a certain record set and a coworker saying, hey, you should check this out. What was the record set? So the first record set was the missing air crew report and that is on Fold3. And it just described what happened to him and what you know, what they thought happened and who died and all of that. So that was the first time that I saw like detailed descriptions of what was actually happening.

Crista Cowan: 12:34

Yeah, so tell us, tell us about how he ended up in the military. I'd love to hear the whole story.

Tara Hall: 12:39

So he had two brothers and three sisters and so big family of six and um they, my great grandpa, was very, very poor all of his life and so he worked so hard so he had several jobs at a time here in Utah. Yes, yes, he was there in Provo. They lived in Provo. His wife my great grandmother was born into. Her father had gotten an inheritance from his brother and he was a famous doctor in san francisco and he left the equivalent of over a million dollars to to his brother and his mother each. So it was a lot of money, and so she just grew up with so much, you know, a lot of clothes and shoes and fancy things. And then she marries this poor man, yes, and so their relationship wasn't the best, but he just worked so hard and he instilled that in his children. And so the three brothers, they all enlisted in the army. Eugene Harris is the first son he enlisted in the Air Force, or what was Army Air?

Tara Hall: 14:06

Force. Yeah, yes, exactly, he was really interested in flying, and I think Norman, the next brother, he really looked up to Gene and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. And then my grandpa enlisted in the Navy, okay, and did they enlist before Pearl Harbor, after Pearl. Harbor After. Okay, I'm not sure about Gene, but he might have been before. Yeah, because I think there was a high school program that fed straight into you know, you know flying school, and then they needed it.

Crista Cowan: 14:43

Did they all join the army?

Tara Hall: 14:44

or corps. My grandpa joined the Navy.

Tara Hall: 14:46

Okay yeah, so he's off in the Pacific while his brothers are in Europe, which breaks my heart sometimes, but just thinking about how alone he was yeah um, so he, so norman, joins the air corps and he goes down to hondo to enlist in navigator school for planes, and so he was a navigator on a B-24. The B-24s were also known as flying coffins because they were so destructible. I think that just added a whole other level of stress for his parents and his family. But he eventually graduated from the navigator school and it's so interesting because I didn't realize that being a navigator was so tied to astronomy until a few weeks ago. It was just crazy.

Crista Cowan: 15:45

but I never made it. Now we think about like fancy instruments and all the mechanics, yeah, but but it was literally.

Tara Hall: 15:51

I mean, he just the b24s for navigation. Um, where the navigator would sit, there's just a plexiglass dome so he can see the stars, and you know there's a horizon that he looks at and then stars above him. And so he really had to know astronomy and be extremely, extremely smart in math, which is so not what. That's not my strong suit. I love astronomy, but math is definitely not my strong suit. So he, he goes over to England, he's stationed in Tiburnum and he is on his third bombing mission and he flies over to Dessau, germany, and they're going, they're trying to bomb one of the plane factories there and his plane got hit by flak and it came down and hit another plane on the way down and they both crashed. They were the only two planes lost in that fight and it was only his third mission.

Crista Cowan: 16:56

And so was he reported immediately. Was the whole crew reported dead? Was he reported missing?

Tara Hall: 17:02

So most of the people there were identified. He was not identified for 12 years.

Tara Hall: 17:09

It took 12 years. So when the planes came down there were, there was a fear of the unexploded bombs that were on both planes and so they couldn't get to it for a while. So he was presumed dead and his parents both received telegrams. They were divorced at this point. They both received telegrams that he was missing and you know, there's no information, no other information that they were given until like over the years they got like little tiny pieces and snippets of what might have happened. Um, until 12 years later they finally identified his body.

Crista Cowan: 17:52

but was there anyone that survived that particular mission, that brought back stories or tried to communicate with the family, or no, there was one that survived um for three days, and he died in a prisoner of war hospital and no communication.

Tara Hall: 18:07

I presume yeah no, so the only things Mosikow, I think is how you pronounce it. It's near Dessau. They saw the crash, they went and recovered the bodies and buried them in a mass grave. He, for some reason, was not able to be identified for 12 years and over the that 12 years they just they were able to identify him by process of elimination oh, okay, so they identified everybody else and he was who was left.

Tara Hall: 18:48

Wow, yeah, and so on his shirt there were. He was a second lieutenant navigator, um, so he had the second lieutenant bars on his shirt collar and there were only two men that had those bars and they were able to, you know, measure height and you know just a few other factors that he was able to be identified by process of elimination.

Crista Cowan: 19:17

Who was it that went in and did that identification? Was it a German organization? Was it a US organization? It was a.

Tara Hall: 19:22

US organization. They came in after the war and helped.

Crista Cowan: 19:28

So how was the family notified? How was the family notified when they finally identified him?

Tara Hall: 19:34

So he was presumed dead and declared dead a year after the accident happened. They just assumed that he was dead and didn't have any real information until 12 years later when they said we think we've found your son. You have two options. We can ship him over to the US and bring him home, or we can put him in an American burying ground. And they said we want him home. And so he. He was brought back over to the US and his brother, gene, accompanied the body from New York and all the way from New York to Utah and full military honors service at this Provo City Cemetery.

Crista Cowan: 20:18

That's amazing. So Jean and your grandfather both survived? Yes, so Norman is the only one who died in the family, and that, like the fact that Jean and your grandfather had both served. They understood what that experience was like, what that experience was like. But I imagine that there was probably some survivor's guilt with this brother who had, maybe even especially for Jean, who because, he had led the way as the oldest brother into that experience, and yet nobody ever talked about it.

Tara Hall: 20:50

Nobody talked about it until their later years and when they were writing their stories. And when they were writing their stories Gene recorded a tape for his sister and I transcribed that several years ago. But he starts talking about it and then the whole thing shuts off and he never goes back to it and it's so sad to me. I really think that his survivor's guilt for sure was definitely there.

Tara Hall: 21:22

He just couldn't talk about it. No, he tried though. Yeah, he did. I think you know it's such a hard thing, because in the later years they do start, or want to start, talking about it, but they don't know how. And they think that or this is just my assumption, um, for my grandpa at least that like nobody wanted to talk about it and so he didn't, but I think he wanted to, he just didn't know how to or who to talk to.

Crista Cowan: 21:58

Yeah.

Tara Hall: 21:59

And I regret, like I said, I just I feel so bad that I wasn't able to talk to him about his brother and ask him, like we don't know, any details about his childhood, like what his personality was like. He's just always been this enigma for us. So he will continue to be an enigma until we see him again.

Crista Cowan: 22:24

So but you have. You have learned part of his story yes you've looked at the flight records. You've, you know, listened to what gene did talk about, like you've made an effort to kind of bring him back into the family story, the family narrative in a broader way. What does that look like? Like? How have you shared that information with other family members?

Tara Hall: 22:47

It's funny because his IDPF. So there's a record that all deceased people in World War II have and it's called an IDpf or individual deceased personnel file. So my co-worker said, hey, he died in the war, he will have this record. Now, unfortunately they go from surnames a through n, I believe, because the rest of them are destroyed. But if you have, he's an H, yes, he's an H. So he had one and I was able to order it and anyone can order them through NARA and there's a wealth of information Really hard stuff in there.

Crista Cowan: 23:32

Like an autopsy file. Yeah, basically yeah.

Tara Hall: 23:36

And he, you know. So I found out some things that I probably wouldn't have wanted to know. But I have that file, but I'm so hesitant to share it with other members of my extended family, my immediate family.

Tara Hall: 23:52

I, it's so, so it feels so personal, it's so so it feels so personal, it's almost sacred. It's an almost sacred thing. So that is the one thing that I haven't shared with my extended family. But I think, really, this podcast is going to just help me share with all of my other family members. And you know, we've been able to get in contact with a few of my mom's cousins one of Gene's daughters, and so she shared a few things, and then one of his sister's daughters, and she actually transcribed. They had seven or eight letters from Norman to his sister and it was so cute, they had such a cute relationship. There's one letter that he's like now, sis, don't tell anyone, but I'm starting to read poetry. So you know he's like don't tell anyone, it's a secret, but I read poetry now.

Crista Cowan: 24:51

So you do have some little glimpses into his personality, definitely so. It's interesting because you think about, like the way that he died and then the fact that the family didn't know what it had, you know where his body was for so long, and like that becomes kind of the all consuming story of who Uncle Norman was. But really you do have these glimpses of who he really was and the child he was and the brother he was, and that makes this whole story about a person. And so when you think about your Uncle Norman, like you don't have to think about the way he died is part of his story, but it's not the whole story.

Tara Hall: 25:30

Yeah, so his dad wrote a story about his life and About Norman's life or about his own?

Tara Hall: 25:35

About his own life. Okay and so, and it's his response to finding out that Norman had been killed and it really just encapsulates the whole thing for me. So I'd just like to read a little bit of that. He said World War II had started and Arthur enlisted in the Navy. Arthur is my grandpa, along with his close friend Tom.

Tara Hall: 25:59

It wasn't long until Art was sent overseas on the destroyer Wedderburn into the Pacific area. All three boys were riding home, often telling me of their experiences, what they were doing, but not where they were located. I still have some of those letters and I often get them out and read them over again, especially those from Norman where he says don't worry about me, dad, I'm going to be okay. I received a telegram from the War Department that my son, norman, was reported missing. That was all. There was no explanation or further details. I was shocked, but I kept saying to myself he's probably a prisoner of war. It was a long wait, and a discouraging one, before we were informed that he had been declared dead. Then we started to get a little information as to the conditions of how he was shot down. As this is being rewritten, it is 24 years since Norman left to go overseas, but the ache is still there and I suppose it will stay as long as I live.

Crista Cowan: 27:03

I know, I know you know that good for him, because men of his era often did not express those kinds of emotions yeah, and I I don't think he did outwardly and I think it was just this outlet of writing his story down.

Tara Hall: 27:24

That was the one that he felt comfortable.

Crista Cowan: 27:28

Sure, and then Norman's mom had her own reaction.

Tara Hall: 27:32

Yeah, so it was years later, it was probably in the seventies my grandma went over to her house and just to check in on her and she couldn't find her anywhere and she eventually heard her crying and so she kind of snuck in my grandma and checked on Norman's mom and she saw her in a set of drawers that she kept Norman's clothes and his picture and she was just weeping over that set of drawers looking at his picture 30 years later 30 years later and they never.

Tara Hall: 28:14

she never showed any emotion. You know she was stoic all the way and but it was just this beautiful. To me it's beautiful because it's it's showing that she is vulnerable and that she is a human being. Yeah, and she still. It still hurts her.

Crista Cowan: 28:34

Yeah, yeah, my great grandmother lost a child. He was a young father at the time and she collapsed when she heard. So she had no problem showing emotion, yeah, but my grandfather said to her she was his mother-in-law. Like his words of comfort were no parent should ever have to bury a child.

Tara Hall: 28:56

And yet it happens and it has always happened yeah.

Crista Cowan: 29:00

But it makes it no less heartbreaking yeah.

Tara Hall: 29:03

I love that they are all together in the Provo-Sony Cemetery. He's with his sister and his heartbreaking yeah. I love that they are all together in the Provo Sony Cemetery. He's with his sister and his parents. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 29:11

And so is there some way that you tell the whole story, and is that, is that you I don't know, I don't know.

Tara Hall: 29:21

I know my brother is really also interested in learning more about him and so hopefully the two of us can kind of piece things together. And you know, obviously my mom never met him, so including my mom in that as well. You know he's, he always holds a special place in everyone's hearts in our family. You know, it's Uncle Norman.

Crista Cowan: 29:45

Right.

Tara Hall: 29:46

And he was so handsome, oh my goodness we'll have to share a picture of him yes, the and you know, I mean all of my my grandpa and his brothers were just so, so handsome and so beautiful.

Crista Cowan: 30:02

Is there anybody alive who's who knew him personally?

Tara Hall: 30:06

Not anymore, they've all passed, but you do have some, some clues. Yes, and you know I was thinking last night. It really is. We have the edge pieces of the puzzle, we we have the full outline of a puzzle, but not their meat inside and the puzzle pieces inside. So hopefully, you know, by all of these records that we've been able to get access to, hopefully we can be able to piece, just take little pieces from each thing and put it together to hopefully create the whole puzzle.

Crista Cowan: 30:44

I love that Well, as you think about kind of your hope for the future, whether it's in telling more of Norman's story or learning more about your family history in general. What is it that you hope for the future?

Tara Hall: 30:56

I hope that our youth today, the youth and teenagers, can look at all of the super, super hard things that our ancestors went through and look at all of the super, super hard things that our ancestors went through and look at that and say, okay, they went through something much harder than I am going through right now. I need to be more resilient and not kind of like not let them down you know, and so I. I hope that we can become more resilient through their stories.

Crista Cowan: 31:27

Well, you know what. You can speak to that probably with some authority, because the story of your great grandmother crossing an ocean gave you the courage to go away to school. Yeah, and it feels like maybe the story of Uncle Norman gives you some additional resilience to continue to move forward in the world, which I think is a beautiful thing, for sure.

Tara Hall: 31:47

And you know, we lost a nephew for me in our family and he was less than two years old. He had cancer, and so we looked at all of the people that had lost children. I mean, it happened, so it happened all the time.

Crista Cowan: 32:05

Yeah children.

Tara Hall: 32:06

I mean it happened, so it happened all the time and we looked at all of those women that had lost their sons and daughters and we were able to say, okay, we're not alone, we're able to. You know, we can take from their experience and become more resilient.

Crista Cowan: 32:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well. Thank you so much for being here. I'm glad I got to hear the whole story of Uncle Norman. Like I said, you've shared pieces of it with me, so now I feel like I know him a little bit better and I'm excited to see how you continue to share that story with your family and what else you might find. Thank you.