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Dutch master

By Dana Rubinstein
The Brooklyn Paper

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A Dutch teenager wants your help in finding the family of a fallen Brooklyn soldier from World War II.

We don’t get many emails from Holland — except for the usual Euro-lotto scams and come-ons for cheap prescription drugs — so when The Paper received a note from 14-year-old Sebastiaan Vonk, we read it closely.

Apparently, Vonk has taken it upon himself to place flowers at the grave of WWII hero Lawrence F. Shea, who is buried in the American War Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands.

Now Vonk, who originally became interested in Shea thanks to a school project, wants to contact Shea’s family. Unfortunately, all he knows is that the Air Force corporal was born on Sept. 23, 1923, that he was from Brooklyn, and that he died on April 2, 1945 in Kassel, Germany.

Vonk has even created a Web site to facilitate his search, at www.sebastiaancollectie.nl/lawrencefsheaeng.html.

“It is very hard to find information about Lawrence,” Vonk emailed. “His [Air Force] records were burned in a fire in 1973.”

Indeed, Shea’s family is really Vonk’s only hope.

“The family could me tell very much about him,” wrote Vonk. “And I don’t have a picture of him, too. I hope that his family has one for me.”

Any leads? Email the little Dutch boy at sebastiaan_vonk_8989@hotmail.com. And, please, no Viagra sales pitches; the kid is serious.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

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