Woman Receives Letter From Father She Never Met Who Was Killed In 1945

[Champ]

INDEPENDENCE, Wis. -- Jane Matchey recently became better acquainted with the late father she never met after receiving a letter he wrote six decades ago.

"I can't describe the feeling I had the first time I held that letter," Matchey, 59, said. "After 60 years, good grief, the man finally seems real to me."

When Sgt. Henry Longmier left to fight in World War II, his new wife Teresa was pregnant with Jane, who was born about two months later.

But the 31-year-old soldier was killed by a German sniper in Belgium in the waning days of the Battle of the Bulge on Jan. 25, 1945.

Prior to that, in late 1944, he and three other soldiers lived in a Dutch village for a time in the home of the Neederlants family.

It seems Longmier neglected to mail the letter to his wife in Wisconsin. When the soldiers moved on, a Neederlants family member discovered the letter while cleaning the room they stayed in. She wasn't sure what to do with it, so she kept it.
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