Talking with Dave Grimstead from Locate International this afternoon it looks sure that both Tommy's story and Some Mother's Son's story will go live on their website in the New Year. Some Mother's Son will be first, and once all the paperwork has been sorted and his Missing Person status is recorded as official, then Locate will be able to start working in ernest for Tommy and his Family from thereon. One of the first things they will be able to do is to take DNA profiles from two of Tommy's family, vital should our search develop far enough to need them for any matching.
And messaging Tommy's sister this afternoon I am pleased to hear that she does talk of progress with Tommy's story, and as she said, "The New Year's not that far away". I find her courage humbling. To have waited fifty years for help, and then when some comes along, to still understand that things take time, makes those of us trying to help, realise that some of these things cannot be rushed, and that we must be patient too.
Managed to get an article about Tommy in the Ouest France newspaper on Wednesday. I met the journalist for about an hour at 11.00am. She went away, wrote in the afternoon, and it was online in the evening. Here's the link. To read the full article you need to pay a subscription of 1 euro! But if you have been following my posts, the article only repeats what I have written beforehand. It's a good article though, and hopefully will be read by many people this side of the English Channel, (France! I'm in Roscoff).
The Some Mother's Son story has taken a bit of a back seat to Tommy's for the time being but they are both running side by side. Some Mother's Son will get a huge lift when Locate go live with his story, I hope, I believe, and I believe more than I hope! Locate's reach and expertise are far greater than mine, although we did get over 1.4 million views via the Cyberheritage Facebook page several months back. Great work from Steve Johnson with that. And if you want to catch up with Some Mother's Son's Appeal, at the bottom of the link you can listen to the song which Steve (plus AI) wrote for him. It's brilliant. In my opinion.
https://buymeacoffee.com/m25roundabout/the-second-appeal-some-mother-son
I have been talking with Tommy's sister about where to go with Tommy's story, and she's all for almost anywhere. She thinks a video is a good idea so I will have a think about how to do that. It would be good to get Tommy's story spoken on video, in both French and Engish, especially trying to reach the local populations along the Brittany and Normandy coastline. Let's not forget that this is only guesswork as far as these coastlines go, and it would be amazing that when Tommy's Missing Person record is fully up to date, that perhaps Locate International might want to use some of their amazing computer prediction programming that can work with old sea states, currents and wind data from decades ago to get some sort of idea where floating objects, such as dear Tommy's body, could have ended up. Although, in my ignorance, perhaps 50 years ago is too far back, hopefully not though.
So, it does look like the Christmas holiday will be a bit of a break for both Some Mother's Son and for Tommy, but the balls are still rolling, the stories are still being told, the impetus is growing. 2026 does look like it is going to be a positive year all round for the so many very personal Missing Person and Unidentified Body family stories out there.
And anyone with a direct line to the archives of particular French newspapers, especially covering Northern and Western coastline France, from June 14th 1975, please do get in touch. Thank you.