Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! Now I hear them – ding-dong bell.

– William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”

Mary Lee Coe Fowler used to simply dismiss Father’s Day. After all, she never knew her father so she found little to celebrate or memorialize.

Jim Coe died at age 34 while serving in World War II before his youngest daughter was born. Fowler’s mother and siblings rarely talked about the man she would later learn was outgoing, funny and caring.

There were no pictures of him displayed in their home. All that remained of the mystery man were some dusty boots and jackets tucked away in the attic that Fowler was forbidden to bring out into the light.

Upon her mother’s death, Fowler became curious when she came across some of these items in her mother’s closet.

In her quest to learn more about the father she never knew and the mother she never felt close to, Fowler uncovered an eye-opening personal history that translated into her recently published book “Full Fathom Five: A Daughter’s Search.”

“Our mother – we had no idea what she had lost,” Fowler said. “She was really hiding all of this sense of loss and sadness, or keeping it all inside.”

It didn’t take Fowler, an author and English teacher living in Pownal, long to realize that the story of Daddy Jim was something to be shared, that she wasn’t alone and that hundreds, if not thousands, of other WWII orphans had felt the same thing she had for years.

“We Coes had no sense of Jim’s character or what he had gone through. We had no idea what he achieved, what he meant to our mother, what their marriage was like, nor how, where, or even why, he died,” Fowler wrote. “We didn’t know when his birthday was, what year he’d died, or how old he was when he was last heard from. We had no grave to go to, no idea whether he was ever missed, mourned, or memorialized.”

When Fowler began to delve into her father’s life, she discovered rich WWII Navy submarine history, a loving marriage much unlike the second, abusive one her mother entered into, and a man who was admired by many.

It was hard to imagine this as the same man whose name she rarely heard growing up.

“I’m finding out more about him as readers react,” Fowler said. “I guess I’m still being enlightened, but I feel like the journey is complete as far as finding out about my dad.”

By including herself in the historical account she wrote of Daddy Jim and his Navy career, Fowler opened up pages to others who are searching for themselves and for answers.

“I took a risk doing that,” Fowler said. “But I thought, ‘What could I bring to this, what could I contribute to such a thing,’ because I’m not a historian and I certainly don’t know about torpedo angles and things like that … I thought I had to bring the yearning for this father. That’s all I had.”

Her first goal was to learn about her father, but secondly she wanted to take readers along with her on the journey of discovery about her parents, who became very different people in her adulthood than they had been when she was a child.

“That combination of the personal search with his story has been very gratifying,” Fowler said. “Part of the decision of putting myself in the book, my own search, was to personalize history, to bring it to life and connect it with the present day.”

In addition to connecting with readers and other WWII orphans, Fowler said the book has brought her closer to her siblings, and made the bond between her husband and daughter stronger.

“Now, me and my siblings are much closer and we can talk about our mother and father as they really were,” she said.

Throughout her search, Fowler came across various pictures of her father.

Not only did she know more about her father’s physical appearance and demeanor, relatives and others shared stories and letters that made Jim Coe seem real.

“I was unaware that he made such an impression on people, like he was so humorous. People really remember him for his humor,” Fowler said. “That was all a surprise because growing up we had associated him with sadness.”

She described the reality of her father like a character coming to life.

“Now, me and my siblings are much closer and we can talk about our mother and father as they really were,” Fowler said.

For the first time, she knew why her mother was sad at Christmas. It was during the Christmas season that Fowler’s mother got the postcard saying her husband was overdue and presumed lost.

“Finding out what she’d lost made us more forgiving of her now when we think about her,” Fowler said. “My mother came alive as a different type of person in this life that she had before I was born.”

Fowler said pictures of her parents now hang in a type of collage on her living room wall. Instead of dismissing Father’s Day, she is able to connect to the man she has learned was a loving husband and father and a WWII submarine hero who was praised by his comrades and the sailors he led.

“[As children], I guess we would think about him. We would think about it in relation to him and just sort of dismiss it from our minds. At least I did,” Fowler said. “It would trigger feelings of loss.”

“Now, I can see him in my mind’s eye because I’ve written scenes of him. Not necessarily [scenes] I’ve included in the book,” she continued. “I can see him gesturing and moving and dancing, so it’s like I can have images of him as if he was somebody that I really knew. Before, he was just a still life.”

adolloff@bangordailynews.net

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