Shortly after getting married and starting a family, Pasquale Niro enlisted in the Army, never to return home.

The year was 1945, and Niro's life was one of 407,316 American lives claimed by the havoc of World War II.

At the time of his death, Niro's oldest daughter, Antonetta Bell of Boyers, was 3½ - too young to remember the man who was her father.

Like many orphans of war, Bell spent the years that followed missing someone she never knew - confused by an absence that somehow displaced her ties to the past.Although her father will never return and many of her questions won't be answered, Bell will embrace a new relationship on Memorial Day as she travels to Holland to visit his grave.As a member of the American WWII Orphans Network, Bell will visit the World War II Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten.The cemetery is about 11 miles east of the German border. Niro was killed Feb. 28, 1945, while driving enemy snipers from a house near Rheydt, Germany.<br></br>

As an immigrant seeking citizenship in the United States, Niro had no known ties with citizens of his new home.His only living sibling, a brother in Italy, was 15 years his junior - just a boy in 1926 when Niro left for America.In 1940, Niro met Mary DeMatteis while riding a bus in Cleveland. They married three months later.Niro had spent only four years with his new wife before shipping off to war - a short time compared to the many years his family later endured without him. Bell's mother, who never remarried, died in 1998.For these reasons, said Bell, no one alive can recount tales of her father's life, relaying stories of his youth or describing the quirks of his personality.Still, she holds dear the sparse descriptions she has heard."My mother always said he was a gentleman.He always tipped his hat to the ladies. She always said he was a good man."My Aunt Gloria says she can still visualize him walking down the tracks (to church) in a suit. He would always tip his hat to say hello."These are the tracks he walked down," Bell said, pointing out her kitchen window before correcting herself to say even the railroad tracks had since been removed - and the railroad bed covered over with stones.In October, Bell and her sister, Rita Blair of California, attended a reunion of Niro's regiment and company in the Army's 29th Infantry Division, where Niro had served as a replacement.Hoping someone there could impart stories of their father, the women had a photograph of Niro printed on T-shirts, with the caption, "Do you know this man?""We talked to a lot of them," Bell said. "But nobody knew him."

"As a kid, you were ashamed because you didn't have a father. It's like a man in a picture," Bell lamented of her childhood. "I remember feeling embarrassed.""As I got older, even by the time I was in high school, I realized more that it wasn't something to be ashamed of - the older I got, the more proud I was.""As a little kid, you knew what happened, but you didn't really talk about it," she said of the silence so typical of those times.Bell said joining AWON in recent years had provided comfort, validation - and a forum for members with similar histories."Whenever you're with those people, you share something that other people don't understand," she explained.Patricia Gaffney-Kindig of Lakewood, Colo., president of AWON, agrees unity among AWON peers can help to ease their pain."Our conferences are emotional moments because virtually all of us grew up thinking we were the only one to have lost a father in the war."Intellectually it makes no sense, but emotionally it does," she said."Approximately 200,000 American children were left fatherless after World War II," she added."Families grieve in a lot of different ways. One of those ways is to never speak of the dead.""I've heard some horrific stories from members who remember the bonfire, where all pictures and letters were destroyed."

"The wall of silence began with vets themselves, who didn't talk about it when they came home. They wanted to get on with their lives and forget about it. They had seen horrible things."Wanda Faith of Harrisville, an AWON member whose father is buried in Luxemborg, Germany, said although her father was often discussed, his absence still made an impact."We always felt as though there might be a piece missing, no matter what we did. There were men figures in our lives, because our mother remarried several times, but they weren't father figures."But we were not ashamed," Faith said. "We grew up thinking that our father was a saint. Between the two sets of grandparents and my mother, our father never did anything wrong in our whole lives," she said, adding her 81-year-old mother still sleeps with a photograph of her first husband above her bed."I appreciate my family for presenting him that way, because that underlying feeling really hasn't disappeared. I understand he was human, but I also have that feeling that he might have been perfect."Niro and Faith's father, Russel "Paul" Wimer, are among the 321 Butler County men who died while serving in World War II.<br></br>

Although Bell has been to Margraten once before, the Memorial Day trip will be the first she will share with AWON friends, since the organized tour is the first of its kind.The trip will consist of 24 war orhpans and their families, who will participate in wreath-laying ceremonies and other formal community events.As well as bonding with those on the tour, Bell will also meet Rozina Quaedvlieg, a 28-year-old resident of Sittard, Holland, who has been caring for Niro's grave.Quaedvlieg began tending the grave about five years ago through the Netherlands War Graves Committee, which pairs volunteers with untended gravesites.Currently, about half of the roughly 8,000 graves have been adopted in the Margraten cemetery, one of 15 World War II cemeteries in Europe maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission.Although Quaedvlieg began corresponding with Bell through her sister, this trip will be the first face-to-face encounter between Quaedvlieg and Bell."Yes, I surely hope it will be a wonderful reunion," Quaedvlieg commented. "I don't expect otherwise.""I visit Pasquale's grave on Memorial Day, during All Saints, during Christmas and when I am off from school and work," she said."I drive to the cemetery to find some peace. I go over there, sitting quietly and think about him. … During the summer I go over there once or twice just to be there.""In Holland, it's a tradition to grow up with the remembrance of those who gave their life for freedom," Quaedvlieg went on, explaining Memorial Day and Dutch Remembrance Day were among times when WWII veterans were honored."In my own personal life, my grandfather and great-grandfather suffered from World War II because they were a member of the Dutch resistance. My great-grandfather had been (captured) and tortured by the German aggressor because of his part in the resistance and his love for the Queen of Holland. He worked for her."As a child I once visited Overloon in Brabant, a World War II museum. I was very young back then. I never forgot what I saw. The pictures were made by our liberators who invaded the concentration camps to free all the people over there. It truly aroused a lot of horrific feelings in me, and I could not sleep afterwards.""I did not know him, of course," Quaedvlieg also said of Niro. "But that is not relevant to me. All the men who are buried over there are our country's heroes and should not be forgotten. To correspond (with) Rita and her family means a lot to me and feels very well."Somehow I would love to find people who knew Pasquale. I think that would be a solace to Rita and Antonetta, too. It is very strange to tell you this, but this man Pasquale has a place in my heart. I keep his picture on my desk, surrounded by (artificial) flowers. ... That's the way I honor him."

For all orphans of war, the loss of a parent in childhood has shaped their lives into adulthood.In addition to the sadness, many AWON members also describe pride at the sacrifices their fathers made."I am a very patriotic person, and I think I'm probably more so because of him - and because he died for this country," Faith noted. "To me, he's a hero, and even though I didn't know him, I love him very much."While many like Faith and Bell know the whereabouts of their fathers' remains, others are still searching.Of the 407,316 soldiers killed, close to 80,000 remain missing.The remains of Gaffney-Kindig's father, a fighter pilot who died on a mission over Papua New Guinea, were found in 1998.The discovery came after Gaffney-Kindig traveled to the remote country, retracing her father's flight path in a chartered plane.Although she didn't find the wreck site on her initial trip, the site was found after she began networking with others like herself, all vowing to keep an eye out for wrecks being sought by friends."Because of terrain and lack of development, Papua New Guinea is a rich minefield of wreck sites," she said, explaining legislation in recent years has mandated more efforts be made to search and recover. "A lot more (remains have been) coming out in the last five years," she added.During the process of finding her father, Gaffney-Kindig also found an unexpected relationship: She met her husband, whose father's wreck was discovered nearby."Their wrecks were about 15 miles apart in the Finisterre Mountains - which means end of the earth," she said. The men are now buried about 100 yards apart in Arlington National Cemetery."His father went missing in the first week of February; mine went missing March 11. They didn't know each other. My father (2nd Lt. George Gaffney Jr.) was a fighter pilot. His (Maj. Earl R. Kindig) was a battalion commander."I proudly bear the names of both men," she said.

The American WWII Orphans Network was founded in 1991 by Ann Bennett Mix. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind.The nonprofit organization includes several hundred members from around the country whose fathers were killed in World War II.Most of these fatherless children are now in their 50s and 60s.Services provided by AWON include:Locating American WWII orphans and offering them a network of peers.Helping WWII orphans find information about their fathers from military and government records.Holding regional and national gatherings and conferences.Publishing a quarterly newsletter of research information, resources, hints, tips and success stories.Maintaining a Web site, which includes a series of bulletin boards and a guest book.Maintaining a database of members.Laying Memorial Day wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery and at American cemeteries around the world.Taken from the AWON Web site: www.awon.org.