NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Sometimes even when someone's died, we just keep learning things about their story. Emily Vardaman Walters has been on a journey like that with someone. We'll start with the story people do know about her dad, Jim Vardaman.
"This is when we knew he'd hit the big time," Walters said, flipping through a book of old article clippings. "TIME Magazine! Nobody could get their head around what in the world he was doing."
Vardaman was always into birding, the hobby of watching wild birds in their natural environment.
"He was planning it around migration seasons, nesting seasons," Walters said of her dad.
Come 1979, Vardaman decided to travel the country to break a record. He wanted to watch 700 species of birds in North America in one year.
There were a lot of articles, though not everybody got it at the time.
"The brash amateur had ruffled feathers of the birding establishment!" Walters laughed. "People thought he was quite eccentric and crazy, which is why he was comfortable with the title of his book; Call Collect, Ask for Birdman. He was the birdman!"
Walters said her dad's legacy in birding is one of building community.
"I think he built the first birding social network with his newsletter," she said. "My dad took the 'me' out of birding and put the 'we' into birding."
Jim Vardaman died in 2007. It's been a while, and Walters has decided to explore a part of her father's story she didn't know much about.
"The father who raised me was always remarkable," she nodded.
Walters started digging through old letters Vardaman wrote his mother in Memphis. It was the early 1940s. Vardaman was in the Army, serving in World War II.
"He sent his mother home his Silver Star," Walters said. "He received his Silver Star for gallantry in action at the Battle of the Bulge, working as a forward observer."
Vardeman just kept witnessing history.
"My dad ends up present at the Potsdam Conference!" Walters said. "This is the big conference in which the leaders of the free world attempt to redefine everything and rebuild Europe."
A few years before that, on November 25, 1942, Vardaman wrote this letter to his mom;
"This year more than ever before, I know I have so much to be thankful for, after listening to some of the things that have happened to my fellow soldiers," Walters read from the letter. "The Lord sure has been good to me because my family life has been more than I could ever ask for. The end of the war seems to be fairly close."
This is why so many of us look through things to tell us those stories a person may not have told. A life is complicated with so many facets. Vardaman did have this one through line. Even during the war, he continued to write to his mother about birding.
"It was an interest, a diversion, a purpose," said Walters. "Even in the ugliest of times, birds were always there for him."
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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