This story began when I was a young woman. With a thirst for the exotic, I left my home in  Maryland and set out to see the world. One summer’s evening in 1980, I arrived at a youth hostel in Alicante, Spain; I was irritated with Spanish truck drivers after a hard day of hitch-hiking, tired, and very hungry. I saw a reddish-blonde man hanging a wet shirt to dry in the courtyard.  I thought “Do you speak English?” was a good opening line in my quest for food.

            “Yes, very well, as a matter of fact,” he said, with a twinkle in his blue eyes. After dinner in the city that evening, we strolled the Esplanade. He was from New Zealand. His name was Archibald Hector Davis, the two least desirable given names in the world, in my book. “What was your mother thinking about when she named you?” I asked.

            Fast-forward a few years: I am married to the man. When he discussed his name with his mother, tears formed in her eyes. He was named for her dear brother, Arch Penhall, who was hit by a German grenade on a Greek Island in WWII, just a couple of months before he was born.  Grace Painter Davis (nee Penhall) kept a framed photo of her brother in his uniform, next to her bed, from 1943 to her death in 2002.

            Archie and his mother were owners of a large old villa-style house in Devonport, Auckland. We lived there, in a separate flat, when we first married, but eventually we moved to the U.S., though we would return for visits every couple of years. Grace’s health faltered, the house was sold, and she moved to a rest home in Whangarei, the city where Archie had grown up, and where his sister still lived. In 1994 we moved there with our three-year old, Jack, for a yearlong stay. Being in a family frame of mind, we talked about becoming reacquainted with New Zealand cousins Archie had not seen in 20 years, but life got in the way, and we returned to Maine without making any contacts.  We last saw his mother in 2001. She was frail, and did not recognize anyone, not even our new little daughter who was named for her.

        While she was still living, with the help of Archie’s sister, we sorted through and divided Grace’s photo collection among her four children. There was a single copy of a Brownie camera photo of a curly, blonde haired girl, about three years old, holding three little flags: American, Russian, and British. This was Diana Grace Penhall, Arch’s only child. I felt that the photo told a story and I kept it. What had happened to her and her mother?  Arch’s widow eventually remarried and Grace did not keep in touch with them, I was told.

            After his mother’s death, Archie wished that he had that photo of his Uncle Arch that was on her bed table, but it was missing. When Robert, Archie’s brother, took up genealogy, I hoped that he would learn where the photo was, or Diana’s whereabouts, and that that would lead to a copy of the photo, so I waited patiently. Robert researched the Davis side of the family and gave us occasional flashes of insight, and eventually a family tree. In his Christmas greetings of 2010, he said he was tired of genealogy and giving it up.

            Here was my opportunity. I had recently learned how to turn on the computer, snoop on my children’s Facebook, and send emails to teachers, so I figured I was ready to take on the quest for the missing photo, or any photo, of Arch.  We asked all family members, and when this produced nothing, I set about looking for Diana Penhall.  I did not know her married name or the name of her mother’s second husband. Archie wrote a letter to a cousin asking for help in locating Diana. We had possession of a memoir written by Grace, at Archie’s suggestion, when she was in her late seventies. I used the information she gave on her forbearers to google and Facebook every twist and turn of the Penhall name, and became friends with other researchers in New Zealand and Australia. I learned everything about the Penhall family since Thomas left Cornwall with his pregnant wife and eight children to settle in Victoria in 1849. Archie’s grandfather came to New Zealand as a Salvation Army missionary and shouted the word of God on street corners till his vocal cords gave out.  Finally, his brother vaguely recalled the surname of Diana’s mother’s second husband. With this, I obtained her death certificate and hoped that Diana’s new name would be on it, but it was not.

       I was stymied. How do you find a photograph, especially when you are on the other side of the world? Sometimes, I knew, a small town might honor their war dead with a memorial or photo collection. We had obtained Arch Penhall’s service record, and from that knew where he lived at enlistment. I googled the town library. It was too small to appear promising, so I googled a larger library nearby, and used their email contact to make my request. Within minutes I had a message that my request had been forwarded to the right person, and within 24 hours I had an email with Arch Penhall’s wartime portrait, obtained straight from the negative! What a library service!

     The local photographer had offered free portraits to departing servicemen. This one was taken in July 1943, the month of Arch’s embarkation. Decades later, when the photographer went out of business, the negatives were offered to the library.

       With this success in hand, I emailed the librarian in Tauranga, where Diana’s mother had died, and asked her to research her death notice. When this produced Diana’s married name, I googled it, and found Diana and her husband growing kiwi fruit nearby. Just as Archie was getting ready to write to her, he got an email from Diana. The cousin, to whom Archie had written, had forwarded his letter to her. Archie and Diana talked, exchanged news, and photos on several occasions.

            Although the library photo was the very same one that Grace kept by her bed, and was in flawless condition, Archie was a little sad that it was not the one that his mother cherished, but he came to be happy about it; if the photo had not been lost, he would never have connected with Diana, nor his other cousins, with whom he had not communicated in 30 or more years. Now, many of the family have become Facebook friends and exchange emails. On subsequent trips to New Zealand, we have visited with them. We produced a 40-page booklet containing Grace’s memoir, photos, and the family history that I have researched, and shared it with each of the cousins.

            The sad end of the story is this. Soon after Archie found Diana, she told him that she had metastatic melanoma which had started in her eye. She was interested in the memoir and family history I was working on, so we put a preview edition together and sent it to her as quickly as possible. She had the opportunity to enjoy it. She died a few months later, on 25 April 2011.