Through my Pap’s eyes: The father he never knew

Editor's note — In a four-part Veterans Day series, The Sentinel tells the story of James Heller, a World War II sailor whose letters home revealed a different side of him to his family.

The series follows his granddaughter's discovery of the letters, Heller's Navy training and service aboard the USS Eldorado and what his son learned about his father through the letters.

LEWISTOWN - Joseph Heller Sr. knew his father worked hard, loved golf and had served aboard a Navy command ship during World War II. What he didn’t know was how much his father loved him.

“He never told me that he loved me. Ever,” Joe said.

More than 30 years after his father’s death, Joe was discovering a side of him he had never known. His understanding of his father began to change when his daughter, Christina Short, transcribed approximately 150 letters James W. Heller Sr. had written, mostly to his wife, Margaret, while serving aboard the USS Eldorado.

In those letters, James asked about his children, worried over their schoolwork and wrote of wanting to hold them again. Joe knew the letters existed but had never read them. Christina’s transcriptions introduced him to a father whose affection was unmistakable on paper and difficult to remember at home.

The man who came home

James Heller was born in Lewistown in 1908. He and Margaret, whom he called Peg, raised Jane, Michael and Joseph. He worked at the Viscose plant and was an accomplished golfer, Joe recalled.

Golf remained important to James well into his later years. Joe remembered his father winning a championship at the State College Elks Country Club at age 78 with a score of 78. It was an accomplishment his son could recall with pride, even as he struggled to understand the more personal side of their relationship.

Joe remembered that his father seldom expressed affection and barely discussed his Navy service. He said his father didn’t attend his baseball games or wrestling matches. He could not recall a Christmas morning when James was home; his father worked then, he said.

Those memories tell us how Joe experienced his father, though they cannot explain everything James felt. The war itself was mostly absent from their conversations. Joe knew the name of the ship and remembered hearing about Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima. He did not understand the Eldorado’s importance as a command vessel until much later.

Christina knew a different James Heller. While she attended Penn State, her grandfather sometimes drove from Centre Hall to take her to lunch. She remembered an affectionate man who rarely discussed the war.

The letters surprised them both, but Joe struggled to reconcile what he read with what he remembered.

“When Chris transcribed them, it was a complete shock to me,” he said.

What he wrote to them

In March 1945, Jane was 15, Mike was approaching his sixth birthday, and Joe was 4. Their father’s letters asked for the details of a household changing while he was gone.

On Mar. 13, 1945, weeks after the Marines landed at Iwo Jima, James wrote directly to Jane. He asked how the basketball team was doing, reminded her to attend religious instruction and wanted to know more about a teenage center she had mentioned. He told her to be kind to her brothers, then wrote what he wished he could say in person.

“I’m in good health, but I miss my little girl and boys very much,” he told her. “My day is when I come home to all of you and have you give me a big hug and kiss. You will, won’t you?”

The letter combined a father’s familiar concerns about school and behavior with expressions of affection Joe said he never heard after the war.

Christina also discovered that James had written bedtime stories for Peg to read to the children while he was overseas. He made up the stories and sent them home, another attempt to remain involved in their lives despite the distance.

Joe didn’t remember those stories, Christina said. They hadn’t become part of the family conversations he remembered after the war. Their existence offered another example of the affectionate father whose words had remained unread for decades.

On Apr. 13, while the Eldorado remained in the Okinawa area, he told Peg he was pleased with the chores the children had completed. He was curious about what the family did around the house and asked for more news of the small things he was missing.

“I’m really interested in any little things you do around the house,” he wrote.

He praised Margaret and Jane for their work on a party, asked about photographs and wanted to hear about Joe’s latest mischief. Even Jane’s work with a camera interested him. There was no battle description that could replace news of them.

By Aug. 25, with Japan’s surrender announced but his return still uncertain, the distance had exhausted him. He was waiting for another letter, trying to imagine home and thinking about the affection he had missed.

“I’ll have a lot of making up to them,” he wrote of the children.

Joe remembers little of that affection after his father’s return. He cannot explain why James expressed so much love in his letters but so rarely spoke of it at home. The letters preserve what James wrote in 1945. They do not tell his family why he later kept so much to himself.

A family in Navy blue

James’ service became part of a family history extending across three generations. His son Mike, the firstborn boy, followed him into the Navy. Two grandsons, Tom Heller and Shawn Heller, also served, according to Christina.

Among the objects the family retained are his pocket Bible and the shaving kit he carried aboard the Eldorado. The razor still had a blade inside. Christina said the National WWII Museum in New Orleans already had similar artifacts and was more interested in James’ letters and envelopes, which documented his experiences during the war.

A different kind of record

Christina organized and typed the correspondence from October 2025 through March 2026, prompted in part by a life-changing health diagnosis. She subsequently donated the original letters to the National WWII Museum, which she said plans to preserve and digitize them.

Joe believes the letters might eventually have been thrown away without his daughter’s work. He had held them for years after receiving them from his mother, then passed them to Christina without knowing what they contained.

“Because of her, it will survive,” he said.

Joe said he was “thrilled and kind of weepy” that his daughter had undertaken the project. He knew he would never have done the work himself. He was proud that his father’s correspondence would survive and that people beyond the family could learn about his role in the war.

Christina gave family members typed copies, allowing younger generations to read words they might otherwise have struggled to decipher. For Joe, the pages offered a fuller account of his father, though they could not give him a conversation with the man himself. James died in 1994. The opportunity to ask why he spoke so differently on paper had passed.

Joe couldn’t say what his father would think of strangers reading those private letters. Christina thought James might have accepted it because she had done the work. They could only speak for themselves.

Yet Joe remembered one occasion when his father surprised him.

In 1978, Joe Heller wrestled for Chief Logan in the state finals at Hershey. His father, Joseph Heller Sr., attended, unaware that James had also made the trip.

During the competition, Joseph ran into his father. James had come to watch his grandson wrestle without telling anyone he was going.

"I didn't even know he was there," Joe Sr. said.