Rossiter: Woman's trip helps her let go of the past

A memory sealed LeEllen Chandler's kiss good-bye.

"It's so far. You don't have enough money. How will you get by?"

LeEllen's mother questioned her daughter this way before her first0 far-flung journey.

About to board a trans-Atlantic flight nearly 15 years later, LeEllen reassured her own daughter and husband the very same way.

"'Don't worry. I'll be fine,'" LeEllen said.

Inside, she counted on prayers to nudge her forward.

"Let LeEllen find her way, calm her heart and show her ... " to him.

For six years, LeEllen researched her grandfather's life as a young man who loved his wife and had a desire to preach. Stopping her were questions surrounding how 2nd Lt. James E. Harvey died in World War II France.

She pursued a maze of government paperwork, one blunted with dead ends and buoyed by leads. Harvey's passing ultimately read in cold military terms: Killed in action. Aug. 20, 1944. Gunshot wound to the head.

LeEllen sought more. She located men and women, American, French, family members and strangers with knowledge about Harvey and the route his Army company traveled.

Her quest led to a benevolent soul in Athens with a penetrating war story of her own. The woman's generosity afforded LeEllen her dream trip to France.

But landing alone would not do. LeEllen called her father before stepping foot on Normandy's Utah Beach where Harvey began his battle tour as a replacement soldier a week after the D-Day invasion.

"We did it!" her dad said. "You made it."

Not yet, LeEllen said.

With her gracious host and guide Henri Levaufre, a historian who lived through the 90th Division's liberation of his town, the Watkinsville woman traveled back in time.

She hiked terrain that bombs carved

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