Book a culmination of Salem man's dream
Lew Holt's project started simply enough: The Salem resident wanted to compile the letters written to and by his older brother, Bill, during World War II, and distribute them to family members.
But Holt, 79, also was hungry to learn more about the brother he last saw alive in 1941. He was curious about the Phoenix, the ship that meant so much to Bill that he would give up his first and, as it turned out, his only visit home to get a place on it.
He longed to find people who had served with Bill on the Phoenix and during his hospitalization for tuberculosis, which eventually claimed his life.
One thing led to another. Eventually Holt's "simple" project took 20 years and spanned five continents.
But in December, at the height of several snowstorms, his payoff arrived: 750 copies of "Brothers of War," Holt's self-published chronicle about Bill, his ship, and the people who were touched by them.
After a career in elementary teaching and school administration, and 25 years of retirement, publication of the book is Holt's greatest satisfaction yet. The other things — playing the fiddle at potlucks and nursing homes, serving as president of the Oregon Old-Time Fiddlers Association — have been for other people.
"I did this just for me," Holt said.
He started the book in the late 1980s with little to go on other than the stack of carefully preserved letters.
Bill died of TB in 1945 in a hospital in Walla Walla, Wash. Family finances being tight and wartime travel difficult, Holt never saw his older brother after that day in June 1941 when the family dropped him off alongside the Dallas-Kings Valley Highway.
Holt could strike up conversations with strangers, and he wasn't afraid to ask for help. Through the years, this paid off.
In 1988, he and his wife, Alice, were at a fiddling convention in Crescent City, Calif. Hearing another couple talk about military reunions, Holt mentioned how much he'd like to know if the Phoenix had such a gathering.
Six weeks later, the other couple called with contact information for the Phoenix Association. Holt plunged into his research in earnest — writing 350 letters to men who had served on the ship.
That kind of serendipity helped Holt track down Bill's onetime girlfriend in Australia, make contact with two Japanese veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack and even find an Oregon company to design and print his book.
But he didn't stop with Bill's era and Bill's story. The Phoenix eventually became an Argentinian ship, the General Belgrano, that sank in the Falkland Islands War.
Holt found the British submarine captain who ordered the sinking of the Belgrano, and he talked with a survivor of that sinking. He brought them together as "brothers of war" and told their story, too.
Holt's message to others: Write something that matters to you, even if it's just 100 unedited words a day.
"If it's not written down, it never happened. We have to write things down, or when the lights go out, they're gone."
bcurtin@statesmanjournal.com or (503) 399-6699
