How a photograph lost during WWII connected 2 families across continents and generations

SOUTH JORDAN — Days after the historic D-Day, a U.S. soldier slept under a lime tree of a French farmhouse near Normandy Beach. Little did he know that some family photos fell out of his pocket while he camped, and more than 80 years later, those lost pictures would result in two families celebrating a cross-continental family reunion.

Lt. William "Earl" Lee fought in the battle of Normandy, landing on Utah Beach, before camping along the coast just like all the other soldiers.

He fought in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, getting gravely injured, losing an eye and suffering severe gangrene on his face. Lee was flown home in critical condition, touching down at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden to see his wife for a few moments before he was flown to a hospital.

Lee, later a captain in the Army awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, survived the war, but returned home to his family a changed man.

His children never knew much of their father's experience. He kept the stories to himself, but it was clear from his discomfort in large public spaces that his scars were not only on the surface, Lee's daughter Patricia Richter explained.

"I didn't know my dad until after many surgeries," Richter said. "We knew he got injured in the war, but that's all we knew, because he didn't talk about it."

Lee died from a heart attack in 1973, days before his 56th birthday. Even though his life was hard, he still left a touching legacy of compassion for his children.

"It doesn't matter who you are or what your class was or what you did or anything. He always went out of his way to be a good neighbor, and that touched and impressed me," Richter said.

A life-changing letter

In 2015, Richter received a "beautifully handwritten" letter from a French woman named Marie Duval. She never imagined what was inside that letter would change her life forever.

"When I read it, I couldn't believe it, because that part of my dad, I did not know," Richter said. "I'm married and have grown married children, and I'm going, 'This is a flash in my past that I knew nothing about.' And it was very tender."

Turns out, just days after Lee and his fellow soldiers camped under that lime tree, a 12-year-old French girl named Irène was searching the campsite for leftover food. She instead found a small stack of photos, including a picture with a beautiful woman holding twin babies.

On the back of that photo, in a language she didn't know, was a note to "the grandest husband and daddy in the world."

"We hope this will fill those empty hours of cheerful thoughts and remembrances of us. We love you dearly and send hugs and kisses to our daddy. Loving you always, your family, Rama, Michael and Patricia," the note said.

Accompanying the family photo were pictures of Lee's friends and cousins.

Richter said her family had no idea her dad had lost photos while in France, but she likes to think that the thought of his family kept him alive and gave him a little bit of hope and peace amid the destruction.

Irène was mesmerized by the photographs. Because she was so grateful to the U.S. military for freeing her country from Nazi Germany, the photos became sacred to her. She of course wanted to find the family and return the photos, but without the soldier's name or any addresses, the task was impossible.

So for 70 years, she kept the photographs safe, proudly displaying them in her home.

Years later, Irène's granddaughter, Marie Duval, asked about the pictures one time when she was visiting, assuming they were family members of some sort.

"I am a little curious, and I ask many questions to my grandmother. One day, I see this picture, this beautiful woman with her two babies, and I was fascinated. I asked my grandmother to tell me the story of this picture," Duval said.

After learning how her grandmother found the stranger's photos, Duval wanted to find the family. For three years, she searched.

"At the beginning, I only had one picture, and my mom gave me the other pictures that they preciously had kept. She told me she gave me this picture to find Pat's family," she said.

The full names she could decipher from the photos were of Lee's friends and cousins. Reaching out to them led to dead ends, and several times she wanted to give up. But she was determined to find them.

A stroke of luck

One day, Duval had a breakthrough: the back of one of the photos said "Ogden, Utah." With a location to narrow her search, she scoured the internet.

Duval was looking through 1944 editions of the Ogden Standard-Examiner when she stopped dead in her tracks. The March 19, 1944, news clipping had the same photo as one in her collection.

"The pictures are not clear at all, so I thought it was a mistake. And it was very incredible ... I had no words," Duval said.

That newspaper gave her a last name, which led to her finding an obituary for Lee's son Michael, who died in 2012. That obituary gave Duval Patricia's married name, and after some more research, she finally had an address.

Overwhelmed with nerves, Duval wrote another letter — hoping beyond hope that this could really be the family she had been searching for.

"It would be for me a great honor and a great pleasure if after all my search, I could finally get in touch with your family to talk with you about this beautiful story which links us," Duval wrote.

In a perfect stroke of luck, Richter had a family reunion planned just a few days after receiving Duval's letter. There she announced to the family the wonderful news about a French girl who safeguarded their family photos for years and her granddaughter who wanted to return them.

"It was really amazing that this little pack of pictures made such an impression on her grandma," Richter said.

For about 10 days after sending the letter, Duval was checking her email every morning. When she finally got one with "William Earl Lee" in the subject line, she assumed it must be a mistake and someone was telling her she had the wrong address.

"I read it and I cried and I told my grandmother, and she was very, very happy. She hoped I'd find them, but she didn't think it was possible," Duval said.

Lee's grandson Dave, son of deceased Michael Lee, had a business trip scheduled in London a few months later. During the trip, he and his wife Karina hopped over to Paris to meet Duval and pick up the photos.

They met in a hotel lobby, and although there was awkwardness at first, but with Duval's minimal English, Karina's limited French and the small amount of Spanish both Dave and Duval knew, they were able to communicate.

"It was a very strange feeling, because I felt like I had cousins and family on the other side of the ocean. And it's very moving to have such deep feelings with people I just met, but it felt like we had always known each other," Duval said.

Gingerly, she handed over a photo album she put together with handwritten notes and the 70-year-old family photos.

"My family and I cherished and treasured (these photos) in tribute to the great man your father was. Thanks to him and so many others, my country and my loved Normandy are free," a note said.

"In memory of this extraordinary story which links us. Merci du fond du coeur (thank you from the bottom of my heart)," another note said.

'The most tender moment'

In 2024, for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Richter visited the Duval family home, stood under the lime tree, walked Utah Beach and visited the Normandy American Cemetery.

"When I got off that train and Marie saw me, the floodgates opened. We both ran to each other, because this girl had spent literally years trying to connect. It was very, very difficult, but nobody was as persistent, or as dedicated, or as determined to make this work," Richter said.

When Richter met Irène, the woman who had dutifully kept her father's photos safe, more tears ensued.

"It was the most tender moment. Grandma Irène, I think she always had a goal in her heart, from a 12-year-old little girl, that she needed to accomplish. She never let go of that," she said.

Duval said she had never seen such a joyful smile on her grandmother's face than when she met Richter. The whole family just couldn't believe it was real.

"It's a bond that is so unique. That two cultures — and there was such a special feeling of appreciation and love — when you meet each other, it's not like a stranger," Richter said.

Since then, dozens of Lee family members have made the pilgrimage to France to meet the Duvals and visit the lime tree. Although Irène has since died, the Duvals and Lees are closer than ever.

"I didn't really start learning about my grandfather until this all started to happen. So my curiosity blossomed because, all of a sudden, I was learning about D-Day and World War II, and my grandfather. ... So that's really how I got to know him was because of Marie," Dave Lee said.

So many pieces had to fall into place to allow this connection to happen, he said. If his dad's obituary hadn't been online, or if the Standard-Examiner hadn't started scanning the old papers onto the website, which the publication only did a year prior, the families would have never found each other.

Richter said she thinks her dad would be proud knowing a part of him continued on through this story and that because of it, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren can get to know him, too.

Bonds of love across oceans and decades

On July 17, the Duval family joined the Lees in a combined family reunion in South Jordan. Richter presented the Duvals with a family photo album, detailing the Lee extended family that they are now honorary members of.

The Lees pulled out all the stops to give the Duvals a true American and Utah experience: riding the tram at Snowbird Resort, visiting the national parks in southern Utah, attending the Shakespeare Festival and more.

They also visited Fort Douglas Post Cemetery to see Lee's grave and pay their respects to the man who unknowingly brought them together.

"If there's ever a time in your life where you want everything to be perfect, it's today," Richter said, opining that her flowers were dead and the heat would put a damper on the Duvals' visit. "We wanted it to be so perfect that it would be a memory, but it's not about all this other stuff. We're getting together, and we're going to enjoy each other."

"I think that that's what life is about, is bringing people together and sharing experiences and having bonds of love," she added.

Even though life is busy, something as small as lost photographs can connect people across continents. If you take those little impressions and connections for granted, or say you're too busy, then you might miss out on something wonderful, the family said.

"Marie and her family could have very easily just mailed us the photos, and that would have been it. But these photos were so sacred to them that they would not let them go. We had to go face-to-face in person to get the photos. And even then, that could have been it, but the story keeps writing itself and continues to evolve," Dave Lee said.

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