Search for grandfather's history leads to children's book

GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) - Peggy Reiff Miller never sought to become a historian or an expert. But a secret she learned about her late grandfather changed that.

Miller grew up in the Church of Brethren in Milledgeville, Illinois, and knew quite a bit about the Heifer Project, now known as Heifer International. The organization started after World War II when its founder, Dan West, came up with idea of sending cows to war-torn countries instead of shipping reconstituted powdered milk.

The Heifer Project teamed up its relief efforts with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and in the two years after the war, they shipped more than 300,000 animals to devastated European nations.

Accompanying the heifers, horses, pigs, mules, goats, sheep and chicks were more than 7,000 men and boys dubbed "seagoing cowboys." One of these cowboys was Abraham Theodore Reiff, Miller's grandfather, who was about 50 when he sailed to Poland in 1946.

Miller said she was shocked to hear about this part of her grandfather's life. "I never heard his story. He never talked about it to us kids growing up," she said. "After he died, my father gave me this envelope of photos that grandpa had taken that he had from his trip."

The revelation caused Miller to do extensive research, which led her to write "The Seagoing Cowboy."

The illustrated children's book tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who brings relief in the form of horses to Polish citizens and sees the destruction left by World War II.

While "The Seagoing Cowboy" is a fictional story, it is based off very true tales told by the men and boys who tended the animals as their ships crossed the ocean.

When Miller started interviewing the cowboys in 2002, she discovered so many stories that had gone untold.

"As I got started interviewing these guys, I realized this history was just hiding away in their drawers, in their attics and in their minds," she said. "It hadn't been documented. I really thought that this really needs to be documented."

The seagoing cowboys hailed from all over the United States and Canada and had a variety of backgrounds, Miller said.

"Some of them had farm backgrounds. Some of them didn't know the front from the back of the horse," the Goshen author laughed.

Despite interviewing about 200 cowboys, Miller learned very little of her grandfather's trip or why he even took it. She interviewed two men who were on the same ship as her grandfather, but neither knew him.

But she did know one thing.

"He had been a farmer," she said. "He was just the kind of type to take up an adventure like that."

Though she didn't learn any more about her grandfather's journey, Miller was inspired to write a book where the main character goes on the same trip.

"The Seagoing Cowboy" features many of the same elements as the stories told by the cowboys themselves, she said.

"This was such a compelling story," Miller said. "The cowboys' stories, they're full of adventure. They're full of danger."

Miller said she's excited to share the history in the book with those who didn't grow up with it.

"Some families didn't even know, like me about my grandfather," she said. "It's revived a lot of family history because once I started digging around in this, the cowboys themselves realized that they had been part of a much larger history than they were aware. The story took on a whole new meaning to them."

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Source: The Elkhart Truth, http://bit.ly/1WG9tKU

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Information from: The Elkhart Truth, http://www.elkharttruth.com