PIERCETON - At first Athalia Gross thought the call from Denmark was in response to a genealogy inquiry.

She soon discovered, though, the overseas connection was from the son of a one-time pen pal, a girl she corresponded with just prior to the German invasion of Denmark April 9, 1940.

"You can imagine my surprise when I finally figured out who the call was from," Gross said recently. Over the years she thought Birgit E. Olsen, now Birgit Lauridsen, had died.

Not only did the woman survive five years of German occupation, she'd married, had children and never forgot her American pen pal, the then-13-year-old Athalia Dill of Pierceton.

Gross doesn't remember how she came by the Danish girl's name and address.

"It was probably through school," she said. "I wrote her first and received a letter back. She asked for pictures of movie stars and postage stamps. I remember sending some photos and stamps in my next letter."

The young Lauridsen, in her letter of introduction 60 years ago, described herself (gray-eyed with very light hair) and her family. She was the youngest of six, born Feb. 8, 1925.

Living in Copenhagen, she studied English for four years. Swimming, croquet and tennis were the sports she mentioned 61 years ago.

In closing Birgit used four rows of "X"s to spell out "LOVE."

Nine days after Lauridsen's March 31, 1940, letter to Gross, the Danes looked up and saw "black birds" in the air. The birds, German bombers, dropped little pieces of green paper advising the Danish people that they were occupied "to protect them from the British Army!"

Gross, a 1944 Pierceton High School graduate, entered nurses training and married Lawrence in 1945. He served in the Army Air Corps, later known as the U.S. Air Force, becoming a pilot in 1944.

Lawrence Gross re-enlisted in 1951, serving 28 years. The couple traveled the country and were stationed overseas. Their daughter, Mary, was born in 1955 and son, James Lawrance, was born in 1957.

He retired a USAF colonel.

Thirty years ago they returned to Pierceton, and the Grosses will celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary this year.

"When we first came back to Pierceton it took a while getting used to staying in one place," Gross said. "After four or five years I was ready to move after all those years of travel. My husband said I always made where ever we were home."

Now the grandmother of four grandchildren and one great-grandchild, Gross kept Lauridsen's l940 letter "because her handwriting was so beautiful."

The letter from Europe was still tucked away when Flemming Fischer called the United States in search of his mother's old pen pal. Fischer, an enthusiastic genealogist, had become adept at tracking people down on the Internet.

He wrote Gross, too. He explained in English that "suddenly, one day, for some weeks ago, my mother told me, that she - my mother - use to have a pen pal before the war, and I did ask her, that maybe I could find her (you) and write you a letter. And now it is done."

And so it begins again.

Since January the women, both now in their 70s, have resumed their correspondence, exchanging letters twice.

Fischer translates his mother's letters to English. The Danish originals are included in the envelopes.

"I had often thought of you and what was become of you and now I read that you are living in a little (?) town, Pierceton in Indiana - far away from nowhere?" Lauridsen wrote in her first note after six decades, "But your name and address from that time I did never forget."

The mother of three children and grandmother of five, Lauridsen is a widow who lives in an apartment complex for pensioners.

Unlike her American friend, she hasn't moved often, having remained in Copenhagen, not far from her childhood neighborhood.

In addition to requesting current information, Gross asked her about her experiences during World War II.

During that war the Danish people got along relatively well because the king immediately surrendered and agreed to cooperate with the Germans. No major battles, except at the borders, were fought on their soil.

An 8 p.m. curfew was set. Black curtains hung in every window.

"But in 1943," she writes, "the underground movement began to act, and from 1943 to 1945 the fight between Gestapo and the underground got harder and harder. The population did not feel the Nazi mentality. Also the Germans began to execute the people from the resistance and the Danish population strike back with sabotage and the Germans show their evil face."

Lauridsen went on to describe how her countrymen smuggled more than 7,500 Jews into Sweden aboard fishing boats, and "only" 600 were arrested and later imprisoned by the Germans.

The Danes sabotaged the Germans on every front in 1944 and 1945.

"And suddenly, one evening, on May the 4, 1954, there came a message in the radio: 'Here is London, here is London, we announce the German troops in West Germany, Holland and Denmark have surrendered.'

"Two minutes after, all the black curtains were torn down and thrown into the street, the biggest party in Denmark began," Lauridsen wrote.

Instead of using x's spelling love, Lauridsen sends roses, in graphic form, to end her letters.

In her correspondence Gross has explained the division of states into counties and townships and promises to write her pen pal of her experiences as a military wife.

The Grosses enjoy traveling West to visit a daughter just as Lauridsen, who became a widow in 1985, loves to travel in Europe (but by bus only - she hates to fly).

Lauridsen says Muslim gangs have made the streets unsafe at night and she usually stays home after dark.

The state takes care of everyone in Denmark, she explains, and citizens travel to Germany to purchase tax-free items like cigarettes, liquors and perfume.

"Because we have the highest tax in the whole world we don't have to pay to go to a hospital, schools, doctors or medicine (if you are on pension), it means lots of things are free in Denmark. But it's a very expensive country to live in - but beautiful anyway."

For now, the women are reintroducing themselves, discovering the similarities and differences of their respective countries and each other.

Already their exchange of letters has lasted twice as long as it did 61 years ago. With few adjustments they've begun to rebuild a friendship that survived a world war. [[In-content Ad]]