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***image2***Master Sgt. Janet O’Keeffe-Hernandez got a phone call from her mother in her Landstuhl Regional Medical Center office at the end of May. The two talked for only a moment but made plans to talk again soon.
They had lots of catching up to do after being apart from one another for 38 years. Her June 2 birthday would far and away be Janet’s best ever.
Sergeant O’Keeffe-Hernandez, of the Texas Air National Guard, was able to reestablish contact with her mother during a three-month deployment at LRMC and has gotten to know numerous lost family members and friends.
“My half-brother Rick has already made plans to fly to Houston and meet me when I go back to the States,” said Sergeant O’Keeffe-Hernandez, a state trooper in Texas when she’s not serving with the reserves. “I want to see my mom soon, too.”
***image1***Sergeant O’Keeffe-Hernandez’s father, Desmond O’Keeffe, was active duty Army and stationed in Germany back in the 1960s. He met a German woman, Heide Hennersdorf, and they were married. After welcoming their first child, Janet, the couple got orders to go to Fort Sill, Okla., then Desmond was sent to Vietnam. When his tour in southeast Asia ended a year later, the O’Keeffe’s went to court and got a divorce, with custody given to the father.
“Who knows exactly why they split up or what they were feeling,” Sergeant O’Keeffe-Hernandez said, smiling. “My half-brother said recently that there are always three versions to a story and in this case it’s dad’s side, mom’s side and the truth.”
***image3***Both of her parents eventually remarried but the isolation from her mother would continue for nearly four decades. Attempts to research public records and Internet documents produced limited pertinent information and it took a Navy officer with an interest in genealogy to finally bridge the gap.
“Tom Prost was really the main person who helped me find my mother,” Sergeant O’Keeffe-Hernandez said. “He is a retired sergeant major in the Army and lives over here. His hobby is genealogy. He is connected in many ways to Germany and has traced a lot of people’s histories in Germany. It wasn’t but maybe one day before he came to me and said he thought he’d found my mother.”
Heide had been remarried to Richard Hapgood and the couple lived in Iowa for over 20 years prior to his death in 2005.
“I’d tried several times to contact my daughter but it never worked out,” Mrs. Hapgood said in a recent telephone interview. “We came close a few times but it just never happened.
***image4***“It was a wonderful surprise when Janet called me April 25. It was so neat. I was in a state of shock. I told her I didn’t give up on her back then because I didn’t love her. She was the first born to our family and a lot of people in Germany and in the U.S. have always wondered about her. There were many people in my family and old friends who wanted to have her in their lives.”
Richard O’Keeffe also got remarried and resides in New Jersey. Sergeant O’Keeffe-Hernandez said her dad had always encouraged her to seek out her mother. She said he always stressed how important it was for her to someday make that connection.
“My father always said he wanted me to do it and I myself was always curious,” Sergeant O’Keefe-Hernandez said. “I just never knew how to go about doing it.
“I recently spent six months downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then I came here. Times like I’ve seen at this hospital as a chaplain’s assistant make you understand how important and how short life is. There isn’t enough time for bitter feelings or resentment. All you have is the time that’s left. I am interested in making the most of that time.”
