Taking Back Hedy

Once someone succeeds in breaking the adhering control of another,
there’s no way to ever harness the freed spirit of that person again.

Hedy L. Vann

Excerpt from the book

He placed the mail on the table in the entry hall and went back to the garage and his project. I picked up the letter that I’d been anxiously awaiting and went to the bedroom to sit at my desk. I sat down and took a deep breath. This was it, the day of reckoning. I removed her letter from the envelope that Joanna had sent it in and gently moved the envelope around in my hands, looking at her handwriting and the address, imagining her hands touching it. Holy Cow! She’s in Miami Beach. I was glad to be alone so I wouldn’t be distracted from the moment. This was my first communication from my daughter who was now 28 years old. I opened the letter and began to read. There were no tears. I had cried plenty of them the first five years after giving her and Bill up. There was just a feeling that a circle was going to be enlarged — my family’s ‘circle of love’.
She wrote:

Dear Helen,
First, I’d like to reassure you that it is not my intention to disrupt your life or to impose myself upon you. My name is Tracy Albrecht and I was born March 2, 1966 at Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, California, and I believe that you are my biological mother. If you are not, I apologize for the mistake. Please let me know if I am incorrect and I will continue searching. If you are, will you try to answer my questions? What is my heritage, my nationality? What, if any, congenital diseases, weaknesses or susceptibilities do I carry? I am very curious; almost anything you can tell me is of interest. Please contact me.
Cordially,
Tracy Albrecht

She included her phone number and address.

I wanted to call right that moment. However, I waited until I found the right time to tell Blake. Although I’ve always been a strong person and had endured many battles, both emotional and physical, the prospect of this particular confrontation left me feeling physically weak.

Letter from Bill Vann

My two sons and I, along with my oldest son’s wife and a small crew were logging and living in a camp at the 10,000 foot elevation in the mountains of Colorado.

Separated from my wife for over a year, we had little communication between us. Even the best phone equipment of 1994 offered us no access to the outside world from our work site. We had a fifty mile trip to the little town of Craig Colorado for fuel and supplies and would make use of the pay phone while there.

As fate or providence would have it, our Vann Logging Company Insurance Plan was due to be renewed at the Glacier General Office in Kalispell, Montana. As I traveled to Kalispell my trip took me through the town of Broadview, Montana, where my oldest son and his wife rented a duplex with the only phone and message recorder connection for the Vann Logging crew.

There is no written word that can express the utter exhilaration, excitement and disbelief that flooded my whole being when I pushed the “listen to messages” button and heard the wonderful sound, “This is Helen Hayward and I would like to get a message to Bill Vann.”

Though I thought of her many, many times and longed to see her, 30 years passed since we said our final good-by. I listened to her message only 15 minutes after she recorded it. At least two months passed since any of us picked up our messages and I could have missed this most important one had fate not been at play.

My head was spinning, my heart pounding, and my stomach churning with unbelievable excitement as I dialed the California number that placed me in contact with the woman I loved for so many years. I would dial the number a hundred times or more over the next several months.

Bill Vann