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Fort Bragg Soldier,
daughter reunited after 15 years
by Reginald Rogers
Paraglide
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photo by Reginald Rogers/Paraglide
Spc. Grant Bolen hugs his daughter, Britney Ann, after seeing her for the first time in 15 years. Bolen and Britney Ann were separated after his ex-wife moved away and legally changed her name. They were recently re-connected after years of searching for each other. |
Imagine having your pre-school aged child taken from you and having no means to contact him or her for the rest of your life. That was the case of a Fort Bragg Soldier who has searched extensively for a daughter he lost more than 15 years ago. On Oct. 14, he was able to give her a hug.
For Spc. Grant Bolen, 15 years of agony ended as his daughter, Brittney Ann emerged from the steps of the escalator at Fayetteville Regional Airport/Grannis Field. “Hi, Pumpkin,” Bolen said before the two engaged in a long embrace, lots of smiles and an occasional tear or two during the joyous event.
Bolen and his only child, Britney Ann became separated in 1995 when Britney’s mother and Bolen divorced when Britney was 4 years old. According to Bolen, his ex-wife soon re-married and legally changed their daughter’s name from Britney Ann Bolen to Erica Britney Danielle Strain. By doing this, the woman eliminated any hope that Bolen had of contacting his daughter.
“Her mom left in 1993-94 timeframe and shortly there afterward, remarried and changed her name legally through the court systems,” explained Bolen, an Indianapolis native assigned to the 126th Transportation Company “This made it even harder for me to try and locate them. I had lost contact with them.”
Bolen said that despite all of his Internet searches, people searches and various entities, he always came up empty-handed, primarily because he searched for them by their birth names.
“I was searching for my daughter’s name and not her new name,” Bolen said. “Anything I searched for on my ex-wife, turned up old because she had remarried and changed her name as well.”
He said over the course of time, he wrote letters to several talk shows, including, Montell Williams, Regis and Kelly and once he arrived at basic training, he even wrote to the Fox News station in Dallas.
“That was the last place that I had known them to live,” he said. “I was hoping that maybe they would do a story on it or help locate her and bring her to my graduation. But it was to no avail. I got no response from any of them.”
After years of trying, he said it wasn’t until his father received a phone call on July 4, this year that he was able to make progress.
Britney Ann and her boyfriend, Tommy Raboin conducted an Internet search and came up with her grandfather’s name and saw that he lived in the Houston area. Even though Britney, who lives in Corpus Christi, didn’t have enough nerve to place the call, she said Tommy made it for her.
“I had been looking for him for a while, but I didn’t really have the money to pay for the online information and I was too scared to call random numbers,” Britney Ann said shortly after her flight arrived. “I had been talking to my boyfriend about meeting my dad and he said, ‘I’m going to find him for you.’ I was like, ‘whatever,’ but sure enough he called my grandfather and said, ‘hey, I have your son’s daughter over here, do you have his number?’”
She said her grandfather then placed the connecting phone call to Bolen, who according to Britney Ann, “freaked out.” On July 4, they were able to talk for the first time.
“My dad called me and said she was trying to make contact with me and that he had gotten a phone call late the night before from her boyfriend,” Bolen said. “He also said that she was too scared and too nervous to make that call.”
Bolen said the phone called carried many emotions with it.
“I felt scared, happy, joyful,” there was a lot of emotions that I went through,” Bolen said. “I was actually at a barbecue with some friends that I had gone downrange with and I got the phone call and went into a back room to call my dad back because I didn’t really understand the message he had left. When he told me that, I sunk to the floor, my eyes welled up with tears.”
My dad gave me a number to contact my daughter’s boyfriend to see if we could set up a time to talk on the phone,” Bolen explained. “She was with Family that day, celebrating the 4th of July, but she wanted to call me later that night when she was done celebrating with Family so that she could be alone and uninterrupted on the phone call.”
He said the experience was emotional and at that time, went through a period filled with fear of rejection.
“It was joyful yet fearful,” Bolen said. “It was that fear of, would she reject me? Then I thought, no she wouldn’t she’s the one who’s reaching out to me.”
Bolen said they agreed upon a time for the call to take place and waited.
He said he didn’t quite understand why she wanted to wait until later in the evening when she was alone. He said he later found out that it was because her mother still did not want her to make contact with him at the time.
“(Britney) eventually felt that ‘I’m old enough now to make this decision for myself and I’m going to go ahead and make contact,’” explained Bolen, a transportation specialist in the unit’s headquarters platoon. “Since then, it’s been absolutely wonderful. Now I can hardly keep up with an 18 year-old and her text messages, but I do my best and we communicate on the computer as much as we can.”
When the phone rang on the night of the fourth, the anxiety returned.
“She called at the exact time we agreed upon, and the only thing that was going through my mind when I heard her voice on the other end of the phone was, ‘hi, pumpkin. I miss you, I love you,” he said. “That was the only thing I could get out at the time, I was pretty choked up.”
Bolen said the first few minutes of the conversation were filled with several moments of awkward silence, before they both broke the ice and started talking.
“It was amazing,” said Britney, who is a freshman at Texas A&M affiliate, Delmar College in Corpus Christi. “I can’t even describe it with words. We were laughing together, crying together. July 4th was a pretty spectacular night. I just remember being under the fireworks at the beach and talking to my dad non-stop for hours. It was pretty amazing,” she said.
“I could hear that she was crying as well and that she was nervous, I could hear it in her voice,” Bolen explained. “It was an amazing moment just to hear her voice. We talked for a little over four and a half hours and she asked me a lot of questions and I asked her a lot of questions,” he said.
Bolen pointed out that Britney is now an 18 year-old college student, who’s doing “fantastic in school.”
He said after the separation, he could only rely on memories and a few pictures that he’s carried in his wallet or placed on his desk at work or home.
“I would always search for her on the Internet, but I just never found her,” said Bolen, who joined the Army two years ago at age 41.
Bolen said since that day in July, he and Britney Ann have talked about school, planning a trip to meet one another, her life plans and his life and Army career.
He said his decision to join the Army was sudden, but necessary.
“I woke up one day and said ‘I think I’ll join the Army today,’ he said. “Before I knew it, I was in basic training and my body was trying to keep up with all the younger kids and I had it in my heart that I was going to make it through this. I look at myself now as to where I was two years ago and I’m ten times the Soldier I was then. And, I’ve been down range and back.”
Bolen said he now feels like his life is more complete because he and his daughter are now reunited. He said the entire process has been a learning experience that he doesn’t mind sharing with younger Soldiers.
“A lot of times I see these young Soldiers come looking for advice or they’re looking to vent and I hear things about, ‘my wife’s leaving with my child’ or this and that,” Bolen said. “I really just try to encourage them to mend the relationship, whether they’re together or apart, for the children’s sake.
“I was taken out of that and not even given the opportunity to keep the relationship open with my child,” he added. “I don’t feel cheated. I feel like my ex-wife did what she felt she had to do, but it was the wrong course of action. That’s for her to live with.”
Bolen said there’s only one thing that’s important to him now.
“I’ve got my daughter back in my life now and I can live with that,” he said. “The past is the past and we’re going to just move forward. We’ve talked about what happened between her mother and I and she wanted to hear it from my mouth before she told me the stories her mother had told her. For the most part, she removed me from my daughter’s life.
Bolen said, according to Britney Ann, his ex-wife also removed his photos from all of their photo albums.
She said a lot of the photo albums are half-empty. A lot of the pages are missing pictures. So she had never seen him in pictures from the first three years of her life.
Amazingly, her recent photos sent by camera phone and e-mail look like the “young baby” that he left 15 years ago, he said.
“We’re going to sit down this weekend and get reacquainted,” he said minutes before the plane landed. “I’m nervous, anxious. She’s a couple of hours late on her flight, due to weather, I’m just ready to get on with the weekend.”
Britney said her arrival was the last step of one of the longest, but most exciting days in her life.
“Waking up this morning was like waking up yesterday morning because I was too excited to sleep,” she said. “I’m not going to lie, I was freaking out on the plane. By the time we arrived in Atlanta, I thought I had missed my flight, but these two older guys told me it hadn’t boarded yet and asked me what the hurry was. I told them I was meeting my dad for the first time and they became excited, as well.
Britney summed up a trip that has taken her 15 years, six hours and across seven states, with four words.
“I love my dad,” she said.
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