also worked part time at a sign and awning company as a graphic artist. Money was tight, but we were able to have some f
You asked what happened. I don't know why, but my life was destroyed on February 11, 1991. But that wasn't when it started, or ended. Everything that I cared about was taken away and I was left alone, unwanted, with no place to live, no one to talk to, no one who could understand what was happening. What I knew was that my children would be with their grandmother and she would make sure that they were taken care of. I believed that Christine would live with her mother for a time, but I knew that there was someone else that she was going to. I think that I will tell this from the beginning of the end. I apologize if some of the events are out of order. I’m doing this from memory with help from the few documents that I have from that time. This is mostly about Christine and I. I was madly in love with her. I had completely changed my life to be with her and couldn't imagine ever being anywhere else. Christine worked at the mental health clinic on post and I was in college taking nursing and science. I also worked part time at a sign and awning company as a graphic artist. Money was tight, but we were able to have some fun. We had the most beautiful children, Eva a fun, happy brilliant two year old, and Thomas, a bouncy, happy one year old, just learning his first words. We lived in on-post housing, a new duplex with a yellow Labrador dog. We had two cars, Christine had taken lessons and learned to drive while she was pregnant with Eva. I was in college, I earned an Associates degree at the local community college and had transferred to the Syracuse University the fall of 1990, an hour drive down the highway. My car broke down that summer and I was dependent on getting a ride with another student that lived nearby. My class schedule and ride situation required me to stay one night a week in a room I rented near the university. Christine was bubbly, silly, happy and very loving until she went back to Maastricht for a family emergency. We got a call from Ada that Christine's father was ill and was going to die. I was in the middle of a tough semester at college, but there was no question that Christine had to go home to the Netherlands to see her father. She was gone for a month, she never wrote, called or sent a message during that month. Even with the cost of an international call, I called her mother's house every week hoping to talk to my wife and let Eva talk to her mother. She was never there and never returned the call. The second or third week I spoke to one of the men at the house (I think it was Fred) and was told that Christine had been living with one of her old boyfriends and that she was only seen a few times during her stay. I had assumed that she would see some of her old friends and that she would probably not go more than a week without sex. I knew that she had been with a few guys on base after we were together. But I didn't expect her to move in with one of them. When she came back, she was different. She was nervous and more often angry about little things. She spent more time out of the house, worked later and acted in the base theater group (she was good). I wasn't sure what was going on, but thought that she was working out a depression from her father. She wouldn't talk to me about it. She was not nearly as friendly as normal to me during this time. One day she was out and I found a letter she had written laying on the desk in our bedroom. I knew that she was writing letters to someone in the NL, but had assumed that she was usually writing her mother.
This letter was to a guy, I was never able to understand much in Dutch (Christine had told me that it was ridiculous to try to learn if I wasn't living there), but my German was very good. I could see that she wrote that she missed this person and said several times that she loved him. The only names I remember in that letter were Ruben and Laurence. I couldn't get much context on what she was saying and could have completely missed what she meant, so I left the letter as I found it and never mentioned it to Christine. We had talked about her friend Ruben that ran a clown show for children. Then we found out that she was pregnant again. Christine was furious with me. She accused me of trying to keep her pregnant her entire life. We had made plans to go to Canada to have an IUD put in (the pill gave her a migraine) but didn't have an appointment yet. Because Thomas had been an emergency C-Section birth, the doctor wanted to have a DNA test done to rule out genetic complications. Christine freaked! She couldn't believe that I hadn't convinced the doctor to do a paternity test. She accused me of cheating on her with people at college. We would be cuddling on the couch one minute and the next she would be screaming at me. The DNA test was drawn on October 14th. Christine was gone less than a week later. It wasn’t a paternity test, only a test to look for abnormalities. One argument was about who we had had sex with before we knew each other. When I met Christine I could count my past lovers on one hand. She had told me that she had more lovers than that the first month that she was in San Antonio, Texas (where I met her). She called me a whore because one of my girlfriends had always left me cab money, I responded like an ass and brought up that she had told me about having sex with a guy because he had drugs to share and had ended up with a bad case of pubic lice. She hit me hard and I pushed her away. She ran to our bedroom and locked herself in for the rest of the night. She was never happy with me after that. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think that it was long before Christine disappeared the first time. I called the police and MP's and the hospitals and the ambulance companies, her work. No one had any information for me. I was frantic. I stopped going to classes to stay with the children until we could find out what had happened. She had checked herself into the hospital, but didn't tell me, or leave a message for me. She was just gone and nobody could tell me where she was for 2 days. Then she was transferred to Walter Reed in DC and I was told that she had been in the local hospital mental health ward under suicide watch. She checked herself into the hospital on October 19th, and was transferred on October 24th. I went with Eva and Thomas to Christine's Sister, Ada's house in the suburbs of DC on October 25th to be there for Christine. It was about a seven hour drive from Ft. Drum, where we lived to Front Royal, where Ada and Fritz lived. Ada said that she could watch the kids while Christine was in the hospital, she had a large house and her children were close in age. It would be much less stressful on the kids and would allow the kids to visit Christine when she was allowed visitors. The weeks that Christine was in the hospital became two months. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which was no surprise to her family. Christine had an aunt that lived in Silver Springs, Maryland, just a couple miles from Walter Reed that told me that she could visit with her frequently.
This aunt told me one weekend that I stayed at her house that some of the family members on Christine's mother's side had schizophrenia also. I worked hard to maintain my studies, frequently talking with my advisor, who was a psychiatric nurse before she took the teaching job. But in November I was assigned a pass/fail essay on “My feelings about nursing”. The other students were able to knock out their essay in an afternoon, with lots of gushy sentiments. I asked my advisor for help getting the assignment delayed, My wife was in the hospital, I was separated from my children, I spent weekends traveling to see them, and most of all I just couldn’t express any feelings without breaking down. I was brought in front of a nursing school hearing and the decision was that I would be marked failing for the assignment and as it was required to continue in my other nursing courses, I was withdrawn failing from the nursing practicum course as well even though the professor for that course argued that I was doing excellent nursing in the hospital setting. I was allowed to continue with the science and fine arts courses that I was enrolled in and invited to return to the nursing program the next fall. Then Christine came home for a couple hours on December 16th, told me that the psychiatrist had told her that her greatest problem was being with me. And she moved into the barracks. Our children were still at Ada's. Christine wouldn't talk to me that week. I called Ada and tried to arrange a time to pick the kids up and she said that she wouldn't allow me to have them if I didn't bring Christine with me. I spoke to a lawyer and we put in a request at the court on December 20th to order her to let the children come home. I don't remember much about that Christmas, I know that I didn't have a tree or presents, but the kids and Christine were home. The court hearing was set for a December 27th and since it appeared that we were on the path to restoring our family I agreed to withdraw the petition for custody. On December 28th we saw a Psychiatrist together where Christine cried that I wasn’t as kinky with her as we used to be. That was the only thing I remember from that visit, and I had never known that was an issue between us. Christine went back to work and I went back to school and worked part time. Two months went by, and we seemed to be getting past the problems. Lukas was born the day after my birthday, Christine said that he was my birthday present just a day late arriving. One week later, Christine drove me to work in Watertown. When she dropped me off she said something about me not seeing her when I got off work. That evening she didn’t answer the phone at home, so I got a ride home by my boss. Christine didn’t come home that night, I called Ada the next day and she told me that she hadn’t heard from Christine. I called the MP’s and the police to report her and the kids missing, and gave them a description of the car. I called the hospitals and the local ambulance companies to see if she had been in an accident. I called every number that we had, no one new anything. Several days later a snow plow was moving a pile of snow in a parking lot behind a building downtown and found the car. It was unlocked and the car seat was gone. When I reported that to the MP’s they told me that Christine had gone to the Woman’s Shelter and was accusing me of abusing her and Eva. The investigator from Child and family services that came to the house had spoken with Christine and Eva first and told me that at that point it was already decided that there were no grounds for the accusations.
We had an appointment with a mediation councilor for February 20th which she showed up for. And I was unable to explain how I could care for the three children while Christine returned to the NL. She was adamant that she was leaving the Army immediately and would be living with her mother. I had almost no income and was still in college with another year and a half to go. At that point I had missed almost a month of classes and would not be able to pass that semester, I could only expect my class load to be that much harder through the summer and the next year. I was crushed, but I knew that the right thing was to allow Christine to take the kids with her to live in the NL. She promised that I would receive letters every week and many pictures, and that in a couple weeks (after I had moved out of the military housing) I could come to the NL for a visit. The Army was paying for the airfare as part of her discharge and she said that she would have a place for me to stay. We agreed on joint custody as I wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t need more time in a hospital. It took the Army a couple weeks to process the paperwork discharging Christine (medical discharge). On the weekends I had Eva visit. Christine wouldn’t let the boys leave with me and I was only able to see them for a few minutes sitting in a Burger King near the shelter. Christine got a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder “signifying her new life” and was surprised when I told her that I thought it was pretty. Then, at the end of March I took Christine and the kids to the airport and watched the plane take them away. A few days later I received a typed letter telling me that they had arrived and were doing good. The Army gave me a voucher for a plane ticket and I wrote a letter to Christine asking her about the kids and about the arrangements for me to come there. I got back a letter saying I wasn’t welcome there and that I could only see the kids under supervision and that I would have to stay in a hotel. I called the American embassy in the NL after getting advice from one of the college professors (a Dutch lawyer that taught international law) and was told that Christine had turned in her passport, renounced her citizenship and had made accusations against me with the authorities that put me at risk of being arrested if I came to the NL. The professor said that was likely intended to get social services, but that I should never go to the NL and test it. I moved to Syracuse, NY to try to return to college, I hadn’t been to a class since the end of January and was officially withdrawn for the semester by the administration. In July 1991 I received a legal form in Dutch that the professor told me was a divorce. He wrote a letter to the lawyer for me in Dutch requesting that I be given legal aid and that under the law everything had to be translated as I did not speak Dutch. In that time I sent several letters which were never answered, I did talk to Christine’s lawyer on the phone at the end of the summer during which she said that the children were doing well and that she would see that I got a letter and pictures from them. I did get pictures later that year, but never heard anything from them again until I found them on the internet many years later. I never went back to nursing school. I spent much of the next year working as an artist’s model in figure classes and studios and repairing computers. I was an activist in the naturist community and spent most of that year nude. I had lost everything and was being rebuilt by new friends. In 1993 I moved to Rochester, NY for work. I took a job as a graphic artist for a local newspaper. I also worked repairing computers, which later became my only work.
The final divorce paperwork came, then a decree that I still had joint custody. But with no way to communicate, there were no addresses, phone numbers or contacts. The embassy said that with Dutch privacy laws, I would never find my children unless they wanted to be found. Years past and I searched databases for their names, and when the internet came I searched social media. There are thousands of Eva Wolf’s in Europe, Lukas and Thomas too. One day I found a few pictures of Lukas and Thomas online, then I found them all. I was afraid of losing them again, so I just watched. Thomas got married, Eva was successful at university and travelled, Lukas didn’t post much. Time past. They were all adults and I decided to send a friend request through to them, let them decide if they wanted to hear anything from me, and let them know that I was still here. Lukas blocked me right away. Eva told me to let her think. Thomas didn’t respond. Then a year later Thomas asked me a few questions. I answered from memory alone and got some of the facts muddled. Eva messaged me and asked me to be more specific. That is why I have been writing this letter now, and why it had taken me a couple weeks to get to it. I have scanned the documents that I have and spent a bit of time trying to get my memories in order. I have posted the few pictures that I was sent in 1991. When I was getting those, I found a piece of old film tucked into an envelope that had the pictures of Christine from 1987 that were used to convince me to leave the Army in 1988. I am having those digitized at a photo lab and will post them also. http://www.ericwolf.net/gallery When I met Christine I was driven for excellence, confidant, physically fit. I studied hard at school and demanded high marks from myself. I put everything into whatever I did. She broke me. She left me unable to hold a conversation for months after she left. My chest still aches whenever I think of my children that were wrenched from my arms. I LOVED her and she hated me. I LOVED my children and she stole them and lied to keep me away from them. I hope that we can have a few conversations. Let each other know about things that are happening in our lives. Go forward as social media contacts, because I don’t know how to be anything else this late in our lives. I don’t expect to be welcomed with open arms, I’m not expecting to come to Europe. Just an occasional glimpse of what you are posting. I haven’t ever hidden what I’m doing, I’m online and you can find out what your brothers and sister are doing easily.
All this happened 25 years ago and as much as I tried to detail the events correctly, I would not be surprised if some of the people that were also there have more of the puzzle and a different view of what happened.
