Couples’ visit to Aubel, Belgium, closes complex loop

In Aubel, Belgium, on Sept. 11 was former Gresham resident Carole Keller Heimberg and her husband, Gerhard, and Melissa Fletcher and Wayne Swanson, both of Boring. Swanson was born on the day that Aubel was liberated by American troops.






It’s complicated, just how a small group of Gresham High grads fetched up in Aubel, Belgium, on Sept. 11 to help that city celebrate the 65th anniversary of its liberation from the Germans.

But it began when a brother and sister, Wayne and Elice Swanson, cooked up an idea for a historical fiction book set in Belgium during World War II.

Wayne, a retired firefighter who lives in Boring and graduated from Gresham High in 1961, had the nugget of an idea for a book. He told his sister, and she wrote the work of historical fiction, naming it “The Baker’s Boy, a Soldier’s Story.” (It is available at Borders and on Amazon.)

Elice, who lives in Seattle and graduated from Gresham High in 1955, went looking for a setting for her brother’s story idea and found Aubel, Belgium, on the Internet, She was struck by an account of an American couple who visited Aubel on Sept. 11 and found it filled with American flags. Believing it was an observance of the New York disaster; the visitors inquired, and learned that the flags marked the liberation of the community by the 101st Army, “The Big Red One,” on Sept. 11, 1944.

“That is Wayne’s birthday. He was born on that day 65 years ago,” Elice said. Struck by the coincidence, she vowed that they would be in Aubel on Sept. 11, 2009.

That is how Wayne Swanson and his partner, Melissa Fletcher, ended up in the town square of Aubel on his 65th birthday with Elice taking the photo. With Swanson and Fletcher was Carole Keller Heimberg, another Gresham High grad, class of 1955, and her husband, Gerhard. The Heimbergs live in Switzerland.

The Heimbergs took the opportunity for a reunion to track the wartime struggle of Carole’s father, Gresham baker Karl Keller. Keller was drafted in 1944, a family man with three children, and sent to Europe. Early in the summer of 1944, he was captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp in Bad Orb, Germany, until the war’s end in 1945. Part of his ordeal was a forced march in the winter through Belgium and Germany. Carole Keller Heimberg and her husband retraced her father’s route through the area on the September trip.

“It was so heartwarming to be in Aubel for the anniversary. They are so kind to Americans and still so grateful,” said Elice Swanson.

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