Elinor and Frederick chose to keep much of their personal story a secret even from their kids. They didn’t talk about their time in the army and how they had to sneak around to be together. The two didn’t share vivid details about their respective upbringings, family dysfunction, or the social climate of the time. They had programmed the family to function in such a way that it wasn’t normal to reveal past grievances, despite the fact that it would have made the children feel much closer to their parents. Conversations that would have seemed obvious to have with the children never happened. With the exception of a few anecdotes, Elinor rarely elaborated on her moments of despair while serving in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, or her anger toward the military and the people of Arizona, who humiliated her with segregation and discrimination.

Her niece Hope was an adult when she learned about Elinor’s time in Göttingen. And that was only because Hope described herself as naturally inquisitive and unafraid to ask her aunt questions, especially about her past, something Chris and Stephen didn’t do.

It was clear that Elinor wanted to protect her sons from the evils of racism, and avoiding the topic was one way to do that. She may have feared that if she shared painful moments, her children would begin to expect the worst from people or start to believe that they were different or inferior. But the reality was that outside of Village Creek, the Albert family was different. There wasn’t a population of black women in the United States who had married German POWs. It was a complete anomaly. And by ignoring the most obvious elements of themselves, Elinor and Frederick didn’t prepare Chris and Stephen for the kinds of questions they would encounter at school and in the real world.

Situations that were awkward for Chris as a child were much easier to understand as an adult. Growing up, he thought it was strange that Frederick would always walk ahead of his mother when they entered a restaurant. Being a kid, he figured his father was just in a hurry and walked faster than anyone else in the family. Later, he wondered if his father was distancing himself from Elinor and their two sons to ensure that they would get a table without any problem. “When we’d go out to eat, up until I was at least nine, I wasn’t really aware of the dynamic. Here’s an interracial family going to sit down at a restaurant in a setting, in most cases in Fairfield County, at least in those days, in which at least 90 percent of the attendants and guests in the restaurant are white.” He remembered some stares within the first five minutes of seating—nothing menacing, but “I felt it.”17