Maryellen Pate displays her father's laundry bag from WWII. Photo by Renee Fox

WARREN — The Boy Scouts, an old barn in Belgium, parents of a Marine lieutenant colonel, a serial number and a couple dedicated to preserving the historical presence of American soldiers fighting for freedom in Europe all led to a Christmas miracle for one Warren family.

Harold Rowbottom was born in a women’s receiving hospital on Hall Avenue in Warren on Christmas Eve in 1914. From 1941 to 1945, Rowbottom served in the U.S. Army. While in Europe, Rowbottom was injured in combat twice.

Somewhere along the line, the white canvas laundry bag stenciled with his name, serial number and other identifying marks was left behind.

When Rowbottom returned home, he bought a farm in Howland and would only talk about the war with male members of the family.

“‘It was horrific,’ he would say,” said Wes Pate, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Army himself and Rowbottom’s son-in-law. “The cold — he said it was always cold. And they would wake up in the morning and find people frozen to death in their sleep. The frostbite — they were always worried about frostbite.”

“He said that kind of talk wasn’t for ‘women folk,'” said MaryEllen Pate, Rowbottom’s daughter.

The family knew Rowbottom suffered residual effects of his service: He avoided Fourth of July celebrations because of the explosions.

Though he died in 2004, MaryEllen Pate said she is learning more about her father’s experience in the Army than ever before.

On a farm in Belgium, the Remember Museum 39-45 was created in 1994 by Mathilde and Marcel Schmetz. It’s a quick drive from the Henri-Chapelle American Military Cemetery, where thousands of American soldiers are buried.

The Schmetz farm opened its doors to American soldiers seeking rest and relaxation in the European Theater, and items were abandoned or gifted to the farm — then and later in time, according to remembermuseum.be, the museum’s website.

“It is a museum with a human dimension, made great by its welcoming environment, its originality, its simplicity. The museum strives to serve as the testimony of our gratefulness towards all the G.I.s who, at the risk of their lives, gave us our freedom back,” the website states.

So when a group of Boy Scouts visited the museum earlier this year and one young man asked to help out at the museum for credit toward becoming an Eagle Scout, and they came across a laundry bag stenciled with “Harold Rowbottom,” the museum’s creators weren’t about to let the canvas remain hidden, MaryEllen Pate Pate said.

To find Rowbottom’s family, the Schmetzes searched the internet for his name. And because MaryEllen Pate still shares a “Happy Birthday, Harold Rowbottom” or “Happy Father’s Day, Harold Rowbottom” on social media, the Schmetzs came across the Pates.

“I’m not in the phone book, so they couldn’t find my number, they must have looked up my address on the (Trumbull County) Auditor’s website,” MaryEllen Pate said.

“For them to go through all that — it is amazing. She keeps breaking down into tears,” Wes Pate said.

The Schmetzes didn’t want to send the bag in the mail, because of a black market for American WWII memorabilia in Belgium, MaryEllen Pate said.

But when a couple from Georgia visited the museum on a visit to Brussels to see their son, a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, the Schmetzes entrusted them to get the bag to MaryEllen Pate.

On Friday, just four days before her father’s birthday, the mailman brought the package the couple from Georgia sent after returning home.

“I could barely see through my tears as I opened the box,” MaryEllen Pate said. “Total strangers, people I have never met, who I’ll never meet, for them to do this…”

MaryEllen Pate was uncertain the bag really belonged to her dad. But the enlistment and discharge papers her sister just discovered in a box have the same serial numbers that are stenciled on the bag.

“There are so many negative things anymore, for people to do this for us is … just, amazing,” Wes Pate said.

MaryEllen said her father never drank or smoked, but instead passed his time reading encyclopedias, the Bible, taking his kids and grandkids on day trips, playing chess and checkers and reading newspapers — front to back.

He taught himself to play the piano, taught Sunday school and worked at the Girard Leatherworks until it closed.