Throughout Steven Thomas' childhood, his father would joke that his mother had almost been British.
Across the globe, Robert Morris' mother talked fondly about the American soldier who had romanced her during World War II.
The two men couldn't have known that one day they'd facilitate their parents' first meeting in 71 years, by internet video.
Norwood Thomas was 21 when he spotted a teenage girl and her friend along the banks of the River Thames. He was stationed at an army base 65km from London. That afternoon, he and a friend approached the two girls and invited them on a boat ride.
Thomas fell head over heels for Joyce Morris (nee Durrant). For nearly every weekend afterwards, he went to London to be with her. But when the war ended, after Thomas survived parachuting into Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, he returned to America. He wrote to her. He wanted to marry her but she didn't realise it was a real proposal. Thomas had kept a photograph of her that she'd given him. Life moved on, as it does, and they soon stopped speaking. Until she found him again.
