A Connecticut man who grew up in Orange has a homecoming scheduled for April 2, when he will deliver a one-hour talk about the book he wrote to fulfill a 30-year-old promise to his late father.
Author Frank T. Waters III has been invited to speak at Wheeler Memorial Library from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. to detail his debut literary work, “A Drumstick for Thanksgiving Please,” which is inspired by correspondence between his family members during World War II.
“People who have read it … have reacted favorably to it,” he said. “A fair number of them have said, ‘This ought to be made into a movie!'”
Waters told the Greenfield Recorder that his father was a fighter pilot during the war and his uncle was a bomber pilot. Hundreds of letters were written back and forth between Orange and Europe, and the pilots’ father made sure they all were saved. One of the letters was penned by the bomber pilot uncle from a German prisoner of war camp. They eventually made it into the possession of Frank Waters Jr., the fighter pilot, who kept them in an accordion folder, where they remain to this day.
Waters III, who now lives in Avon, Connecticut, with his wife of 50 years, explained that the Smithsonian Institution visited his father in the 1990s and offered to archive the letters in Washington, D.C. But his father wanted them to stay in the family and asked him to one day use them to write a book.
“I thought about it for a week or so, and I said yes,” Waters said this month. “It basically has hung over my head for 30 years. I went through them all in great detail when I first got them in the early ’90s. Eventually, they got put away in a closet. When I retired, I had more time to devote to it.”
Frank Waters Jr., the book’s principal character, died in 2003.
Waters said he used Storyworth, a storytelling platform that sends weekly prompts to subscribers and compiles their responses into a printed book. He explained the book’s title comes from a letter his father wrote home after completing his final mission in October 1944 — a postscript requests a turkey drumstick for Thanksgiving the following month.
Jason Sullivan-Flynn, director of the Orange Public Libraries, said Waters reached out to him with the idea for a presentation, and it was an easy decision.
“He’s very eager to share the story with his hometown of Orange. Supporting local authors is important for this library. We’re fulfilling our mission,” he said. “It’s certainly important to recognize the sacrifices of those who came before us.”
Waters grew up in Orange and graduated from Ralph C. Mahar Regional School in 1966. He eventually coached high school girls basketball for more than 20 years and started working on a memoir about his career, though he never finished it. He said the April 2 talk will be a family reunion of sorts, as his brother still lives in Orange.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” Waters said. “They truly were the greatest generation. In that generation, everyone was a patriot. The war effort was tremendously supported.”
“A Drumstick for Thanksgiving Please” is available at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon (tinyurl.com/WatersDrumstick).