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Why Did Her Mother Lie?

Photos from Judith Batson

Going through her mother's things, Judith Batson found clues about Kalle Korhonen, the grandfather she never knew.

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By JUDITH BATSON

Special to the Tribune

Published: July 27, 2008

I never knew my Finnish grandfather, who immigrated to the upper Michigan peninsula in search of a better life. Like so many Finns at the time, he found work in a Michigan copper mine, but the work dried up. He died long before I was born. At least that was what my mother always told me.

She said her father had returned to Finland, joined the Russian Navy, was lost at sea and never heard from again. How romantic. My mother's mother, I was told, had died also; my mother was an orphan at age five. How sad.

My mother died in the 1970s and I've kept her boxes of books. Four years ago, I decided it was time to do something with them. I opened the boxes and started sorting.

I was 68 at the time and about to discover the truth. Stuck between the pages of her high school year book were nine letters. They were sent between 1934 and 1939, postmarked Soviet Karelia.

My mother's stories about her history had been as familiar to me as a pair of well-worn comfy pajamas. Discovering the letters made those pajamas scratchy and ill-fitting. My mother had lied to me.

"From your long lost father," one said. The salutation was in English; the rest of the letter was in Finnish, a language I don't speak.

I sent them to a Finnish translator at a college in Michigan and the truth unfolded. My grandfather was named Kalle Korhonen, born in 1887. In the late 1920s, he had joined a popular movement known as Karelian Fever.

Karelia was a desolate slice of Russia that had once belonged to Finland. Finns from Canada and the United States were recruited to move there and form the People's Republic of Karelia. Thousands - my grandfather among them - jumped at the chance. Many were living in poverty or became entranced by the promises of building a better society.

The cruel reality came later. Many would die from hardships and disease. Thousands were executed just before the start of World War II by the Red Army. They were trapped in a political maelstrom because Russia had declared war on Finland in what became known as the Winter War.

The more clues I discovered, the more I wanted. I turned to genealogy groups on the Internet to ask questions. I followed vague leads, and wrote to anyone with even a remote connection to the times, history, or any records.

I contacted history professors in Great Britain, Canadian storekeepers, librarians, and Finns living in Michigan, Oregon, Washington, Canada, Finland, and Russia. I sought out translators, archivists, and of course, professional genealogists. My postage bill grew by leaps and bounds.

I wanted to know when, and where, and how Kalle had died.

After nearly two years of searching, I learned about two elderly sisters in Finland from a member of an online genealogy forum. They might have known my grandfather, I was told.

Eagerly, I wrote to them and they responded. They hadn't met Kalle but knew the names of his stepdaughters. They didn't know where the stepdaughters lived.

I posted this new information on genealogy sites. It caught the attention of a man who wrote to people he knew in Russia, who in turn wrote to me. I was told of Marti, who lived in Petrozavodsk, capital of Karelia.

Marti sent me a long, handwritten letter in phonetic English. Yes, he had met Kalle, soon after Kalle's arrival in Karelia. He said Kalle had died of tuberculosis in about 1939, and not as I had feared, of execution.

As an aside, Marti mentioned Kalle's great-grandson Valeri, who lived nearby. I could hardly contain my excitement about finding someone in Kalle's family. I sent a letter to Marti to deliver to Valeri.

Three or four months passed with no news from Russia. Finally, I heard from Valeri's sister, Margarita Golovanova. Her brother had recently died, she said. Rita told me about her family and about Kalle.

She also sent me photographs, which had been found in Kalle's books. One was of me as a baby in my mother's arms. So Kalle had known about me; he had seen my photograph. This was a tremendous emotional release.

Rita also sent me a photograph of the church and graveyard where Kalle is buried. No one knows the site of his actual grave; it is among those that fell to ruin during the war years.

Since then, Rita and I have exchanged numerous e-mails, pictures of our children and homes, and marvel at how close we feel to one another, even though we have never met. She calls me her big sister.

I now have a deep appreciation of the tragic circumstances surrounding my mother's heritage. From conversations with many Finns, I now believe my mother found it easier to lie than to reveal her father had abandoned her to become a Communist. I learned, too, that fear prevailed among those whose family members were swept into Karelian Fever.

Finding the story of my grandfather was exhilarating yet painful, but I rest easier knowing the truth.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Judith Batson, 71, was born in Detroit and lived on New York's Long Island as a teen. She raised three children, worked in sales at a trucking company, and was a Red Cross volunteer. Batson moved to Tampa in 1968 and is now retired. She has four grandchildren.

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