Collin Lueck
Editor
Thomas Boedy has hung onto a small black and white photograph for the past 70 years. The photo, of six women he’s never meet, reminds him that the kindness of strangers can make a big difference in the hardest of times.
All Thomas ever knew about the ladies in the photograph is that they were Americans – from Merrill, Wisconsin, specifically – who sent care packages to the people of war-torn Europe immediately following World War II.
As a young boy growing up in Austria, Thomas and his family received a few of the packages sent from Merrill. The photograph came with a care package sent in 1949 by a Mrs. Boettcher. She had written her name and those of the other ladies responsible for sending the packages on the back of the photo, including her sister, Mrs. Art Schroeder, along with Mrs. Weber, Mrs. Roman Saeger, Mrs. Lenz and Mrs. Zich.
In the bleakness of post-war Austria, these ladies from Merrill brought a ray of sunshine for which Thomas remains grateful 70 years later.
“Everybody was deprived and hungry,” he remembers. “These were truly gifts from heaven.”
In a country where food was scarce and heavily rationed, the edible contents of the care packages were greatly relished. A box of gelatin which came with one of the care packages, Thomas remembers, was the best gelatin he ever ate in his life.
“Just a package of jello was so wonderful,” he said.
Thomas and his family lived in Guraz, Austria, for four years. His father, who could speak English, worked as a supply manager for the British Army that occupied Austria following the war.
“There were people there from all different countries,” Thomas remembers. “Some had relatives in the United States. My dad would translate messages for them.”
The Boedy family would later move to the United States, settling in Omaha, Nebraska.
Now a semi-retired Jesuit Priest living in Milwaukee, Thomas recently came across the photo of the ladies from Merrill while going through a file of family memorabilia. Seventy years and 7,000 miles from his childhood, Thomas came to Merrill this week on a mission of gratitude.
“I want to thank the kind people who thought of us in that time after World War II,” Thomas said. “I am so grateful that they were willing to share those care packages with us. They were a light in the darkness.”
