Virginia is rich in history and heritage. My wife and I visit often. An Aruba treasure was the last thing we expected to find in a dusty barn packed with random piles of worn, rusty and tired artifacts. This one solitary barn in the misty hills of the Shenandoah Valley was for decades the custodian of documents detailing one man’s persistent, and at times seemingly desperate, crusade to reconnect with a girl he had known on Aruba in early 1940. I have gone through most of these personal documents and in doing so I glimpsed into many lives and events. This man’s writings, the crumbling pictures, the primitive drawings and a selection of random items reveal a man who’s life was frozen in the Caribbean sun in the early months of the 1940s. He had made a pledge to this island girl and he was committed to return and find her after the war. Cardboard postcards show that he did go back to the island in the 50’s. And this is where this private story turns into a mystery. Nobody – nobody – on the island was open to talk about the girl. It is not that she had vanished. It seemed she never existed. His indignation was intense. But he persisted and he compiled this dossier that I have found. The documents are incomplete, but I have reasons to believe that he never did find her. At what point did he gave up on her? Or did his life give up on him? Whatever other material possessions he had accumulated in his lifetime, he held on to the pictures, mementos and detailed narratives of his time with this girl. She was not an imaginary figure. She led a life. Her name was Sera. I have seen her picture. Something happened to her. Why would nobody on that island talk with him about that girl when he went back in the 50’s? How come there is no record of her today? Who is this Sera and what is the cover up?