Ret. US serviceman returns to search for girlfriend, daughter

BY GEORGE TRILLO

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga – US Serviceman William Clark returned to the Philippines two years ago to search for his Filipina girlfriend and their daughter whom she left in 1965.

Now he’s back to continue the search, hoping this time, his former girlfriend Betty Rosales and their daughter Mildred, now 42 years old, would surface.

Clark, now 66 and a gymnasium owner in Fairview Pennsylvania , was stationed as a serviceman of the US Air Force at this former US Air Force Base from 1962 to 1965.

Early in 1963, he met Rosales who was then working as a cashier in a bar along the MacArthur highway in the Baligago Commercial district in Angeles City .

They fell in love, established their own bar called Coachman’s Inn, also in Baligago, and live together in a small home near the Abacan River in the same district.

In the first quarter of 1965, the US military assigned Clark to the Hollmon military base in New Mexico .

“I left Betty pregnant, but she had the bar to provide for her. Her sister and brother-in-law were with her to take care of the business,” Clark said.

It was the last time Clark saw Rosales. “A letter I got from another serviceman based at Clark informed me that she gave birth to a baby girl sometime in 1965 and that the baby was named Mildred after my mom,” he said.

Though Clark had left to Rosales his address in the US so that his communication with her would continue, he never received her letters.

“Somehow, my mother who received the letters was never able to turn over the letters to me before she died several years ago,” Clark said.

Without communication from Rosales, Clark married a Spanish-American in 1967. The couple had three children.

They were later divorced, and Clark again married a Korean national who bore him two more children. In July last year, they also divorced.

“So my eldest child is Mildred and she is my only child whom I have never seen,” Clark said.

“Now I want to make up for the time lost between me and Mildred,” he said, showing his passport which indicates that since he first came to Angeles City two years ago to look for her and her mother and he had been to the country four times.

“I have examined the birth registry in Angeles and Mabalacat town, but there is no Mildred born from May to July in 1965. I also checked baptismal records in churches in the towns but I found nothing,” he said.

Clark said he was not sure whether Rosales used his surname or hers for Mildred’s records.