Following the Echoes: Hold On to Those Old Letters

PREVIOUS POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

• Following the Echoes: The Quest to Uncover a True Wartime Story of Love, Loss, and Legacy
• Following the Echoes: The Others
• Following the Echoes: Into the Abyss

On this Canada Day, in a new (and long overdue) update, my brother and co-author, Lance Fox, and I are pleased to share that we have been able to uncover additional information related to Following the Echoes.

The time around Remembrance Day seems to be the season that keeps on giving, and on November 11 of last year, it was the great-grandson of someone featured in the book and an earlier blog post who followed an echo and found us.

In my October 2023 post “The Others,” which featured several individuals in the book whose relatives we hoped to connect with, I mentioned James “Norman” Lillico, a dear friend of Wendell “Del” Drew from their time together in the RCAF.

Norm hailed from Britannia Village in Ottawa, where he spent his childhood days during the Great Depression on the hockey rink in the village. Aged just eighteen in 1940, he enlisted, as did many of the other boys (read this wonderful article, “The Boys of Britannia,” which Norm contributed to in 2009).

In 1941, Norm and Del met at wireless school in Montreal, where they became great friends; they were later reunited at bombing and gunnery school in Jarvis, Ontario. Overseas, they found each other again in Scotland (Del was in Prestwick; Norm was in nearby Ayr), and the two enjoyed travelling to London whenever they had leave together.

Eventually, Del and Norm would be transferred to the Middle East and posted to Malta and Egypt respectively to begin their tours. Flying from Egypt, Norm visited Del in Malta but was later posted to India. They continued to send letters to each other until one day, when Norm’s letters to Del were returned, stamped “MISSING ON OPERATIONS.”

Norm was devastated. Theirs was a deep friendship, and Norm always cherished the memory of Del. In 1990, he was prompted to write a letter containing memories and anecdotes about Del. This letter, which ultimately ended up in the possession of Shirley McKellar of Radisson, Saskatchewan (Del’s home village), amazingly resurfaced and appeared in Following the Echoes over thirty years later.

Norm passed away on July 29—the same date as his cherished friend—but sixty-seven years later, in 2011, at the age of ninety.

And so, on Remembrance Day of 2025, I received a message from a young man in Ottawa named Hayden Kovacs:

Hi Claudia,

I know you probably don’t remember, but I came across a post you posted a few years ago about Norman Lillico. Norman was my great-grandfather. I spend every Remembrance Day learning as much as I can about the time he served and came across your post.

I remembered, of course, and immediately messaged Lance, who was at a Remembrance Day ceremony with his family in Regina, Saskatchewan. Hayden put us in contact with Norman’s daughters, Anne and Julie, who were also thrilled to connect, and over the next few days we exchanged messages, photos, and information. Anne and Julie were also able to provide us with new details featured in this post.

Anne recalls Sunday dinners at home “when we were all held captive around the table,” and their dad, especially after a glass of wine, would “tell stories about the war for literally hours,” remembering minute details of his days in the service.

Readers of Following the Echoes may recall that we suspected our Grandma Gladys was the girl with whom Norm and Del went skating, and whom they had dubbed “Queenie,” but we had no way of knowing for sure. Also, we had been unable to pinpoint exactly when Del and Gladys met for the first time.

But after reading our book, Julie went through her father’s unpublished memoir and reported back:

After reading our dad’s letter in the book, I went back to his memoir to try and pin down when your grandmother and Del may have met. It was quite a surprise to find Dad’s entry: He refers to he, Del, and another couple of lads spending time skating. Dad then writes: “and this is where I met Gladys Hope, or Queenie as Del dubbed her!”

“I insisted that all the girls for miles around would come flocking in when they knew he [Del] was here, but I can remember how they brightened up the place.”
-Norm Lillico

Julie was able to establish that Del and Gladys met in April of 1942, as well as this interesting tidbit:

Very surprisingly, it would appear my dad briefly courted your grandmother before Del. He talks about going to their home for tea after skating or catching a show and that your great-grandfather would always make an entrance and want to quiz him on armaments, which Dad recalled your great-grandfather knew more about than him!

Del and I, along with Walter Affleck and several others would jump on a street car or bus on a nice evening and spend a few hours at Belmont Park. We were still at an age when we enjoyed rides on the scenic railway, loop-o-plane and things of that nature. Del had a cast iron stomach and could go from one ride to another with no break. It was the same when he was flying. No matter how rough, he never became air sick. The more arobatics the better he liked it.
-Norm Lillico

Norm also mentions that our great-grandfather, Neville Hope, was in the Home Guard and a fire warden (the latter of which we did not know). Julie adds:

In any case, it seems this is where they all met, and Gladys was such a lovely girl, well as my dad wrote, tongue firmly in cheek: “Del made sure that I knew he would move in on my territory as soon as I left London.” I think it’s safe to say that the love story begins there.

Indeed, that was the beginning of Del and Gladys’s incredible love story. And now that we know more about its origins, we have also learned a valuable lesson, thanks to Shirley McKellar, the lovely lady who contributed a wealth of information to Following the Echoes, and without whom we never would have learned about anything in this post: Hold on to those old letters—you just never know how important they will be to someone someday!

Following the Echoes is available worldwide through major online booksellers. Your favourite bookshop can also order it in for you. Just give them the title or ISBN number: 9781039188396 (paperback) or 9781039188402 (hardcover). For news, updates, and excerpts from the book, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. For other enquiries, contact me at claudiareppen@gmail.com.