Much progress was made and some avenues had very happy endings. Another one did not, for a family did not want to be involved.
Below is a letter from a woman in the United States who assisted Catherine with her quest:
Hi Marion, yes I remember I told Catherine that she could give you my contact information and I consider her my good friend and grateful to her for taking care of the graves of our soldiers. My father was WWI and my two oldest brothers were WWII, Korea and Vietnam, and WWII; I am the youngest of five, so I have been very involved with our veterans in our community.
When Catherine started looking for family members of Julian Melendrez. I was an elected official at the time. She emailed the "City Council" and I just happened to be at my computer when her email came through. "Melendrez"" is a well-known name here in Las Cruces, NM, and I was born and raised here, so I thought it would be an easy task to find the relatives, most of the Melendrez's lived in my neighborhood where I grew up. Very long story short - he was not related to any of them! It took many, many calls to finally find Julian's daughter who lived in California; her older and only brother had recently passed away and neither one knew their dad was buried in Normandy. They were about 3 and 4 years when their father left for WWII, Julian was drafted and she remembered following him outside as he tried to leave that night, and he picked her up and took her back in the house. Their mother, common law wife of Julian, told them he just never came back from the war. It was all very emotional. The newspaper here picked up the story and the entire community knew about Julian and his daughter and her family. We invited them to visit Las Cruces and in the process found other relatives here that she didn't about it, so it turned out a beautiful family reunion.
MARION's NOTE: I elected to remove this section for privacy's sake for the Kashula's
I think Catherine just wants to be very careful that we don't hurt anyone in our search.
Thank you for what you do; you too must have some very interesting stories.
Dolores C. Archuleta
Mayor Pro-tem emeritus
City of Las Cruces
Proud Daughter of Walter (Monday) Poniedzialek
540th Engineer Combat Regiment, 2833rd Bn, H&S Co, 4th Platoon
There's "No Bridge Too Far"
