SWEET HOME - What started out in 2004 as a way of connecting her children and grandchildren with their ancestors grew into four years of self-exploration for Gert Helvey of Sweet Home, whose family - including her parents and four sisters - emigrated from Holland to the United States in April 1956.

Learning how to navigate computer programs as she went along, Helvey has published a 300-page hardbound book of her family history, "The Continuing Family History of Dominicus van Lith and Suzanna Bruggeman van Lith."

Helvey said she gained "an appreciation for who I am and that I belong to something much bigger than my immediate family of birth - a family of origin."

She also learned that the "life-defining events of our parents and their parents' lives also effect the next generations to follow."

Helvey, whose given name is Geertruida Maria Johanna van Lith, was 8 years old when her family's adventure to America began. More than 50 years later, Helvey's journalistic adventure and family scavenger hunt started with a "computer and a wonderful little book called Producing a Quality Family History. I read it, underlined it, circled it."

"I learned there is more to me than just having olive skin," Helvey said. "I learned that our ancestry plays a role in how we look at life. How we organize our life. We learn by modeling, seeing our parents do something over and over again."

World War II

Helvey knew some details about her father's role in the resistance movement during World War II. It was a patriotic effort that landed him in the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp.

"Our mother was getting older and I kept asking for more details," Helvey said. "She was the last one of her generation who experienced occupation, liberation and stories of heroism first hand. She was very obliging. It was as if she completed the stories for us that dad began years earlier."

Helvey's book helped her further her father's promise "to never forget what happened" inside the walls of Buchenwald.

Thanks to her persistence, Helvey's immediate and extended family members now have copies of letters sent from her father to her mother - Suzanna Maria Elizabeth Bruggeman - whom he married shortly after the war ended. The letters were a lifeline that kept her father's spirit alive during the darkest days. The couple, separated by walls and guns, learned to write in code to smuggle information about the war in to the prisoners and out of the camp to the war-torn public.

Here is an excerpt:

August 6, 1944

Dear Suze,

Your sweet letter from 28 July I received. Suze, that is the only thing I long for. I can understand that you long for my letter also. With me all is in order and I am happy to know about that too. First, congratulations on your birthday, sorry I did not remember. Hopefully the words on the end of your letter will be real.

I will whisper beautiful things in your ear. Your package with the 'niestadje' (photo) makes me happy and then when I see the love and care that you used to send it, brings me so much closer to you in my mind.

Suze, thank you so much. When freedom comes, we can be happy. A beautiful future lies before us!

After more than four years of captivity, Dom van Lith was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, and the couple married on Oct. 2, 1946. He became a police officer, but soon yearned to bring his family to America - the land of opportunity, his friends said.

In America

The family came for many of the same reasons as other immigrants - freedom of religion, politics, economics - Helvey learned. Their first stop was Salt Lake City, Utah, but Helvey said it was as though they had never left the old country.

"Everyone was talking Dutch. Our mom did not like the lay of the land. It was like living in a bowl. They thought and acted like being in Holland," Helvey said. So, her family soon moved to Salem, where their sponsors lived.

"In Salem, we had to trust only each other. It was the best decision for our whole family," Helvey said. "My dad got a job digging graves for $25, then went to work for the city of Salem. He had $75 left in his pocket. He rode a bicycle to work to save money."

She also recounts what it was like being a youngster not only in a new school, but in a new world.

"Classmates were learning to read while I was learning to speak English," Helvey said, recalling her first weeks in an American school.

"It was traumatic and sad, that last month of the 1956 school year. I just sat there unsure, frightened and for the first time alone, apart from my sisters. I was handed school papers to do just like all kids in the class, but did not know what was being asked of me. We played outside on the playground, like all kids do. During those times I secretly always hoped to get a view of my sister on the playground during recess. She knew what I felt like and I knew what she was going through. That experience bonded me to my sister in a very special way for life."

Doing the research

Helvey has traced her family's roots back 18 generations. Her book includes 1,400 family names. She painstakingly compiled the information using basic detective and reporter skills - genealogy books, letters and phone calls, and the Internet.

The family became naturalized citizens in 1961, an event that was captured by a photograph in the July 21 edition of the Statesman newspaper in Salem. A brother remained in Holland until 1966.

Helvey's father died in 1993. Until a few weeks ago when she moved to Mount Angel, her mother, 84, lived in Salem.

Helvey has visited Holland in 1971, 1992 and 2008. She keeps in touch with family members, especially her first cousin, Els de Kievit, the daughter of her mother's sister. Kievit recently spent two weeks with Helvey and said she is "very proud of her."

In her book's introduction, Helvey writes, "This family did not just happen by accident, for with God there are no accidents. It is not everyone who lives out the blessings given and gets to have a 'woven-together' family like ours. We are where we are and who we are because God has blessed us on our way. We are because of God's faithfulness to the prayers and faith of our parents and their parents and so on, for a long time back."

To encourage family members to live up to the book's title, Helvey included several blank pages in each book where relatives can continue adding to their family's evolving story.