My Dad passes away b4 my son was born..need Photoshop help [Archive] - Page 24

Viet_Vet

02-26-2004, 09:27 PM

Thanks you, with all my heart, for all the suport you have all given to me and my son through all of this. For the 50 or so people that PM'ed me after the WOFN interview, <3 for all the kind words.

Here is the full story, as promised:

NIKKII’S STORY

The story is long, but to shorten it would result in only part of the story being told. After being medivaced from Viet Nam, I ended up in Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii. My father had been working internationally, but was based out of Washington DC. I had only seen him once in 6 years, and was not feeling to good about that, as my father and I were very close. In the mean time, my wife (now my ex-wife) was 4 months pregnant with my son. We decided to move back to the mainland, and I called my father with the news. He was living in Falls Church Virginia at the time. He lived alone in a 3-bedroom apartment, and invited us to move in with him until we were able to find a house.

We moved in with my father around August 1980, and I got a job immediately, working for Western Union. My son was due in late December. My father was thrilled about me having a child. I know he was hoping for a boy, as there were no males to carry on the family name. My dad doted on my ex-wife, not letting her do any work around the house. He was anxiously awaiting the birth of my child.

On December 17th, I was at work, planning a surprise birthday party for my wife. I received a call from her just before 5, saying to rush home immediately. I thought something had happened to her or the baby. I drove home as fast as I could, and as soon as I walked in the door, I knew what had happened. My father had been killed in a car accident.

Two weeks later, on Jan 2, 1981, my son was born, and I named him after my father. His nick name is Nikkii.

My wife was a flight attendant for Pan Am, and when my son was about 6 months old, she went back to work. She traveled lot for her job, sometimes being away for as long as two weeks. I was working for Western Union, and also traveled for work. I, however, did not like leaving him with babysitters for more than a day, so I took him with me when I traveled on business. We were very close, and never liked being away from each other. My wife and I drifted apart gradually, and ended up divorcing when my son was 1 ½ years old. In the divorce decree, we had joint custody, with a provision that neither of us could move with him more than 50 miles away from the other parent.

I ended up remarrying 1 year and ½ later, to the woman I am still married to. I was promoted several times with Western Union, finally being offered the job of Vice President – Far East. Accepting this job, however, required that I relocate to Tokyo Japan and open the office there. The offer was fantastic, but leaving my son behind created a dilemma. I approached my ex-wife and made a proposition to her – I would pay all expenses for her to move to Japan, rent a house for her in a good neighborhood with a yard where my son could play, pay all the expenses associated with the house, pay all her expenses for food, utilities, etc, and pay her a monthly allowance that would allow her to be comfortable without having to work. She agreed to this, and so we moved to Japan in October of 1984.

She lived in Chiba prefecture, near the airport, and I lived in Fuchu, near Tokyo. My son stayed with his mother during the week, and with my wife and me on weekends, holidays, and vacations. Everything was working out fairly well. My wife and I were happy, my ex-wife had her own life.

One weekend, around July of 1985, I went to her house to pick up my son for a trip to a hot spring in northern Japan. I had just flown in from Korea, and we had the trip planned before I left. I arrived at the house, but no one answered the door. I walk around the house, look through the windows, and the house is empty, abandoned. I’m standing there in shock and total disbelief. I’m thinking that maybe I’m at the wrong house or something, so I walk back around to the front. I look at the house number and almost fall to the ground. I call the realtor that managed the house rental, and she informed me that my “wife” had taken the deposit money, saying that she was moving to Australia, or Austria, she (the realtor) didn’t really remember.

Now I am panic struck. Where do I go? Where do I look? How do I even begin to try to find her? This is a woman who was on a leave of absence from an airline that went all over the world. She was gone, and she had taken my son! I found friends/family of hers in Japan, and threaten everything from public humiliation to bodily harm. No one is talking, no one knows where they are that will talk.I spend the next 4 months trying to track them down. I went to the airport and asked airline employees, spread their picture around as much as I could, posted their pics in Musahi-sakai, Akaska-mitski, and Shinjuku train station, sort of the forerunner to the milk carton thing. In Japan, I enlisted the help of a friend of mine in the Yakuza. I contacted every person I knew in our government, as well as some in foreign governments, from my old days working with the government. I flew to Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, and anywhere else in the Far East where I knew she had contacts.

I got one piece of information, rumor really – she had gone back to work for Pan Am and might be living in Ozone Park near JFK airport. By this time I had been completely neglecting my job as VP at Western Union, but cared only for finding my son. I called my boss in Upper Saddle River, and asked to be recalled to the U.S. I arrived back here in the States and started my search again.

I left Western Union in 1986, and with no job, took off again looking for my son. I hired a lawyer with ties to some big Private Investigators. I laid out over $40,000 to them. They called me one might saying they located my son and his mother in the Los Angeles area, and that they could move in and abduct my son, then bring him to me, as soon as they had filed the proper papers with the state of California. This was in early 1987. I told them that under no circumstances were they to abduct him, but to wait for me to arrive. I didn’t want to traumatize him anymore than he had already been, I flew to L.A. , met up with the two guys from the agency, and went to find my son. We arrived at the address to be told that she had moved out a week before, and was flying again. She had only been stationed there on a temporary basis, and had left for somewhere in Europe I was told.

I spent all of my money, and money I didn’t have, searching for them. The money ran out, so I returned to New York and found a job in the auto industry in order to survive. Her lawyer (from the divorce), and mine, knew that I had permanent residence here, and I wanted to stay in the area in the event that my son ever tried to contact me. I filed for total custody, which was awarded in abstentia of his mother. At this point, there was nothing more I could do but pray.

I tried to get my life back together, and to make up the time I had taken from my wife in looking for my son. I had neglected her for years, but she remained supportive of me in my search. She had 3 children of her own from her previous marriage: two sons and a daughter.

Her oldest son, Sean, lived with us. Her daughter and younger son lived with their father, staying with us on holidays and over the summers. I treated all three as my own, never calling them my “step-children”. I grew to love each of them, and Sean was a true blessing to me. I love them all as if they were my kids, but Sean was special. He returned my love without reservation, and it was this blessing that allowed me to keep my sanity all the years that Nikkii was missing. Sean is married now, with a son of his own, my grandson. My wife’s younger sister died in 1992, leaving 3 young children behind with no father, so my wife and I “adopted” them, raising them as well. My family had grown from me having one son, to us having 7 kids between us.

Fade to 2002, October. I am at work when I get paged for a phone call. I answer the phone, and a voice says, ”Is this Wallace Hall?” I reply that it is, and the person on the other end says, “this is your son, Nick”. I cannot describe in words what rushed through my mind at that moment. I was in total denial. It took me a minute or so to compose myself, hearing “hello, hello?” numerous times, then said, “If this is some kind of sick joke, I am going to fucking kill you”. Very few people knew the story: my step children (I hate that word “step”), my boss, one or two friends, and that was it. My son says, “no, this is your son. It is not a joke”. He tells me he is in Middletown, where I worked, at an old friend of his mother’s house. I get directions, call my boss to tell him that I am leaving for the day, and rush out.

When I first saw him, it was like something out of the twilight zone. Keep in mind, for all these seventeen plus years, I had always remembered him as a 4-year-old child. I stood there staring at this 6’ 1” young man, trying to adjust my thinking to realize that he had grown up. I looked into his eyes, and right away I saw my little boy…………I rushed up and hugged him, trying to give him all the love I had missed over the years, thinking I could assimilate what had happened to him, what he had been through, all in one big hug.

It was awkward to say the least. I knew what I felt, and what I had been through, but had no idea of what he had been told about me all these years, where he had been, or how he had been treated. We got in the car, and I drove him over to my house. We sat out on the deck and talked for hours. He was very reluctant to talk about his mother, or his past. He wanted to focus on the present, and I respected his wishes. He was living in California, going to UC Berkley, and had one more year to go. We talked about his future, his grandfather, showed him pictures, and all I could do was keep telling him how much I missed him and loved him. He was reticent, and after a few hours he asked for a ride back to his friends house. It killed me to let him go, but knowing what I know now, I am glad I didn’t insist on him staying. As much as it hurt me, I drove him back, and he left the next day for California.

We talked on the phone constantly, but he was always evasive when I asked questions about his mom, where he had been, etc. He just told me that he wanted to focus on the positive, and on the future, saying the past could not be changed. I found out that his mother had remarried, and that he had been adopted by his stepfather without my knowledge or consent. His name had been changed, which hurt me deeply, as I had named him after my father.

My mother, who lives in Daytona Beach, had a birthday coming in June. She was turning 78, and is not in the best of health, having had 2 heart attacks and a small stroke. She had asked me and my 4 brothers and sisters if we could all come to Daytona for her birthday. We all talked, and decided to have a small family reunion. I felt that this was the perfect time to get together with my son again. I called him, asked him to come down and see his grandma and meet the rest of his family. He agreed, and I sent him a plane ticket to fly from San Francisco to Florida.

My wife and I met him at the airport. He was genuinely happy to see us, and I felt a warmth from him that I did not feel when he had been at my house 8 months earlier.We spent the next week talking. I told him what I had been doing, how my life had changed, all about his family history, his 6 step-brothers and his step-sister. I avoided bringing up anything to do with his mother. I felt that he would talk to me about is when he was ready. He asked me questions, lots of questions: Why his mother and I divorced, what I did after she took me, how I felt, and some more personal questions about the years he was gone.

He finally brought up his mother on the 4th day, while we were walking on the beach. He gave me the whole story, about what he had been led to believe over the years, about me, why I wasn’t around, etc. I answered all his questions truthfully. We walked for hours, always talking. We went through some painful truths in those hours, until finally he broke down crying. He gave me this tremendous hug, and I held him for in a tight hug for 2 or 3 minutes in silence. He finally pulled away, grabbed me by the shoulders, and said what I had waited years to hear: “I love you Papa. I love you more than I ever imagined I could. I’m sorry that I waited so long to contact you”.

He was sorry? He had done nothing wrong. He was the victim, and he was apologizing. We both had a good hard tear-jerking session, then continued walking down the beach. I watched his face changed from one of tearful joy to anger as we walked, and I stopped him immediately and asked him what he was thinking. He was full of anger towards his mother for the first time in his life. He finally realized that his dad worshipped him, and that his mother had misled him about me for all these years. He felt resentment for his mother, for denying him the chance to know and love his father, and for disallowing him the opportunity to have my love returned to him. His hostility toward his mother was almost explosive. He now truly knew how much I loved him, and how wrong he had been in the assumptions he made about me. I cautioned him strongly against taking his anger out on his mother. I warned him that although he was now old enough to take care of himself, to take this resentment and lash out at his mother would result in nothing but pain and suffering for all 3 of us. I begged him to be more understanding of his mother, no matter how wrong or misguided she was. I have always looked at things in this way: to forgive the negatives and focus on the positives. To do otherwise in life gives you a shallow and hollow attitude towards others, and turns you into a cynic.

We walked in silence for a while, then he stopped an turned to me. “I’ve thought about what you just said, Papa. You had the perfect opportunity to berate my mother, to condemn her for stealing all those years from you, to twist my anger and make me hate her. The fact that you have compassion for her, and that you forgive her, only makes me love and respect you even more”. He gave me a big hug, and we continued walking down the beach, talking as we headed back towards the rest of the family.

The next day we talked more, and he gave me even greater news. He wants to change his name back legally to his birth name! By now, I was walking on cloud 9. All the pain and suffering from the years of being away from him were melting by the wayside. My anger and resentment for his mother were gone. All I could think of was that my son was here, and that he loved me. Nothing else mattered. We finished out the week doing things together, drinking a few beers, talking about women, and doing some partying.

Our flights for home left within 30 minutes of each other. We said our good byes at the airport, and boarded our flights and left. He called me from San Fran letting me know he arrived home safely. Since then we have talked on the phone many, many times.

After he went to Burning Man, he left the U.S. for Japan, where he is working for two years. We communicate regularly, and I spoke to him about this story, asking his consent to release most of the details. He has agreed, and so I am posting this. He does not know yet about the photoshop pics, as I want to wait until they are both finished. At that time, I am going to have prints made, get them framed, and mail them to him in Japan.

To all of you in Tribalwar and the Tribes community, I want to express my love and thanks to all of you for making these pictures happen, for the unbelievable support you have all shown, and for keeping the thread on topic. As of this writing, it is 24 pages long, more than 450 posts, and over 21,000 views. Other than 2 off color remarks, not a single true flame in the whole thing! I am so proud to be part of this community. <3 to everyone of you.

Vet

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EDIT: Forgot to ask- is anyone working on the pic ofmy son and I at current ages, and morphing my dad to what he would look like today ?