RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (WCBS 880) — A Long Island, New York woman who says she never got to know her father before his death was given an amazing gift recently to keep his memory alive.
“I wanted anything, something that someone might have – a photograph or memory or something,” said Eileen Sullivan Alber, of Riverhead.
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In November 1950, Alber’s father died when she was just 4 years old while he was trying to save others during the Korean War.
She told WCBS 880 she has no personal memories of her father but, she has always been searching for more and more information on him to connect them.
In recent years, Alber said she wrote on a war memory website searching for information about her dad and was shocked when she got a response from an Indiana man and his wife.
Roger Goodland, 87, of South Bend, informed her that he was the owner of her father’s Army duffel bag, which was used 81 years ago. in World War II. He told her that he had purchased the item 75 years ago in a second-hand shop, when he was barely a teenager.
“He went into an Army/Navy store when he was, well 12, and he bought the bag – he thinks [he paid] 10 or 25 cents for the bag,” Alber said.
The Long Island woman said even though the man loved the bag and would use it frequently on camping trips and other excursions, he felt compelled to return it to the previous owner’s family and sent her the bag just days before her birthday.
“I’m still crying two weeks later,” Alber told WCBS 880.
She said she will cherish the gift and is thrilled to have something tangible that her father once owned.
“I was in shock, and I could actually put my hand around the handle and know that that's where his hand was,” Alber said.
The Riverhead woman said the duffel bag was one of the best gifts she’s ever received and is seeing it as a present from the family she has lost over the years.
“I’m a family of five – two sisters, my mom and my dad – and they're all gone. I'm the only one left. And I thought, ‘Isn’t this wonderful the four of them got together and got me a beautiful gift for my 75th birthday.”
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