Woman lost dad she never knew when SS Leopoldville was sunk Dec. 24, 1944
Joy Hayes Norton looks like the father she doesn’t remember.
He was a U.S. soldier named Albert Hayes. He was from Allentown. He could play the piano by ear.
Norton, 72, owes her “classic Irish beauty,” as her daughter calls it, to Hayes. But Norton only knows the few details her family shared over the years, and they were tight-lipped about Albert. Mostly, the man she calls Father is a voice on a dusty phonograph or a guy in fatigues holding a baby in black-and-white photos. His eyes look like hers.
On Christmas Eve 70 years ago, Pfc. Albert Hayes was aboard the SS Leopoldville crossing the English Channel with the Army’s 66th Infantry Division en route to the Battle of the Bulge. Early that evening, as the Leopoldville approached the French coast, a torpedo from a German U-boat slammed into her side.
Read more:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-christmas-eve-leopoldville-20141223-story.html#page=1
That is so sad. At least they went quick and probably in shock, once they hit that water! I have fallen in the water off a dock in Maine in the summer and been momentarily paralyzed when the water was only 55 degrees!