GREENE — John Hovestadt thought his search for a World War II buddy ended more than a decade ago in Knoxville, Tenn.
His friend’s last known address had been erased by a shopping center. And his name, Charles Smith, was maddeningly common.
“Do you know how many Smiths are in the Knoxville phone book?” asked Hovestadt. “Pages and pages. And I called every one of them.”
In the years since, his daughter has unsuccessfully combed the Internet for clues.
“We really had no way of finding him,” he said.
Then Hovestadt mentioned his search to a guy at his VFW hall, Roger Hamann of Greene.
Hamann, a Vietnam vet, has made a hobby of reuniting folks.
“My heart is really into this,” said Hamann, who earned three Distinguished Flying Crosses for his work as an interpreter in OV-10 spotter aircraft over Cambodia.
He spent a year in the region, from 1971 until 1972, flying in missions so secret the Pentagon kept them classified until the mid-1990s.
And he made lifelong friends. He knows what the camaraderie means.
“There’s nothing like it,” said Hamann, who often spends his evenings online, talking with vets in chat rooms or on the computer phone service Skype.
For Hamann, reuniting people has also become a growing business. He and his wife, Joan, created Searchlight People Locators (www.searchlightpeoplelocators.com) out of their home in Greene.
Joan handles the business. Roger helps people find lost friends and birth parents. But his specialty is finding military friends, putting some of the tools he learned as a hobbyist to work.
“There are a lot of websites that do this kind of work,” he said. None are from Maine. And most consider themselves finished when they generate lists of people to call, he said.
Hamann does more.
“He’s a little digger” Joan Hamann said.
The process worked out for Hovestadt, whom Hamann helped for free.
“He never gave up finding my buddy,” Hovestadt said. “He never stopped looking for Smitty.”
In August, Hamann found new information about Hovestadt’s friend after months of part-time work.
He’d begun by combing the expected search sites, concentrating on Smiths in the Knoxville area. Then he began expanding his search to vital records and, finally, talked with someone at a small newspaper outside the city.
In their online archives, he found a reference to a Charles Smith that fit. He crossed-referenced with some other records and found the name of a family member. Then he picked up the phone.
He called a son who led him to a daughter.
Yes, her dad fought in Italy, but she was unsure if he’d been friends with Hovestadt. And she couldn’t check.
Her dad, Charles Smith, died in the mid-1990s.
Hamann called Hovestadt, who called the daughter. The next day, he sent copies of several pictures to the woman. They pictured him and Smitty.
“For two solid years, we were together,” Hovestadt said. “We trained as a team.”
In early 1945, as the war neared its end, the men fought in northern Italy. There were moments when they saved each other’s lives, Hovestadt said.
“I was like a shadow to him and he was to me,” he said.
In 1947, as they left the Army, they promised to stay in touch. They wrote for years, but in the mid-1950s, Hovestadt’s letters started coming back unopened.
Soon after that, Hovestadt moved to Boston. He looked for his buddy years later at reunions. And sent out inquiries.
Nothing worked until Hamann helped.
A few days after Hovestadt sent the pictures to Knoxville, Smith’s daughter called. She not only recognized her dad in the photos, she recognized him, too. Among her dad’s things, she had found copies of the same photographs.
Yes, conclusively, her late father was Hovestadt’s friend.
“It was an exhausting search, but it definitely was worth it,” Hamann said. “Needless to say, it made me feel good.”
He only wished he’d found Smitty alive.
“I was devastated at first,” Hovestadt said.
With a little time, he began to find peace in the discovery of his friend. Hovestadt plans to meet Smitty’s daughter later this fall, when he makes his annual trip south. He also plans to visit his grave.
“I’m very grateful,” Hovestadt said. “It closes a book for me.”
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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- Roger Hamann shows off a model of the airplane he flew during missions over Cambodia during the Vietnam war. His laptop at his home in Greene shows the website for his business that helps reunite military buddies.
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