PLATTSBURGH -- Kathy Baumgarten came to know her dad only by accident.

"My mother didn't talk about my father, growing up," said the Plattsburgh woman.

William "Bill" Diedrich died in 1961, when Kathy was just 3. She realizes now that her mother fell into a deep depression when she lost the love of her life.

Terry Pawlack didn't share memories of Bill with their three daughters; no pictures of him decorated their Niagara Falls home.

"I remember a Father's Day one time," Kathy said.

The radio played, and an announcer dedicated a song to all the devoted dads out there.

"My mother blurted out, Why do they have to say things like that?'" and shut herself in her room, crying.

"That kind of thing happened a lot," Kathy said. "It was kind of like being orphaned, in a way."

"I felt abandoned."

A REAL HEP CAT

One day, searching for peanut brittle in her mother's dresser, the little girl discovered the bottom drawer filled with her father's photos, many of them taken in the South Pacific during his service in World War II.

"I'd sit there for hours, visiting with my dad," she said.

For decades, that was her only link with him.

It was only after her mother died, in 2000, that Kathy and her sisters unearthed a treasure trove of wartime letters written by her dad.

Through those tender, funny and poignant missives, Bill Diedrich came alive. In that correspondence, he romanced and won Terry Pawlack, he recorded his wartime experiences, his hopes and dreams. And he filled in many blanks for his daughters that his untimely death had created.