Untitled

Copywriter 2007

Chapter 1

It was only by accident that I happened to be home the day two uniformed Air Force officers came to my house. Actually, it was my parent’s house. I was there because I was home from college during quarter break. It was March 21, 1968. I had just been discharged from the Navy in January, after four years, including two tours in Vietnam, at Danang.

I was in bed, sound asleep, when my Mother came upstairs to my room. She opened the door and walked in, and stood quietly looking at my bed. I became aware of her presence and opened my eyes to see what she was doing. She stood in the middle of the room, her head bowed, her hand to her forehead.

“Allen’s m-m-m-missing” she said, stammering to get the sentence out. I had never heard her cry before, at least, I didn’t remember her crying. It was not like her. She was not a person who was bowed easily. I thought of her as happy, joking, but most of all stoic. We Didn’t talk about personal things, and we didn’t show our feelings, so I knew that something awful had happened when she couldn’t keep her composure.

She sat down in a chair near the foot of my bed and sobbed.

I might have left my bed to comfort her, but I was not dressed, and frankly, I had never been taught how to comfort someone. I was still a child, though I had just served four years in the Navy. I had avoided personal relationships all my life. Now, my Mother needed me and I didn’t know how to help her.

“Don’t worry, Mom”, I said. “He’ll be alright. His plane has special armor to protect the pilot”

“No he won’t”, she insisted, and sobbed again. “ Two Air Force officers were just here. He’s gone”.

I wasn’t lying about my brother’s plane. I had read about it at the library. But, I was not being totally honest, either. The truth is my brother had been flying a Cessna civilian aircraft at treetop level in Laos. The Air Force had purchased a fleet of them as a stopgap measure to replace WWII spotter planes while a new generation of spotter planes was being produced. The first wave of the new planes was due in Southeast Asia in a couple of months. In the meantime, my brother, Allen, had been ordered to fly the Cessna Skymaster. It was literally purchased off the shelf, as manufactured for private recreational pilots. The only change was to install some smoke rockets on the wings for marking targets, and, they had put some boiler plate under the pilot’s seat -- the special armor.

Mom got up and went back downstairs.

I laid back down and closed my eyes, thinking about my brother. He was twelve years older than I. I hardly knew him, which partly explains why I held him in such high regard. He was graduating from high school when I started first grade. He attended two years of college at the University of Minnesota, then joined the Air Force and was sent to Officer Candidate School to be a pilot. It was an opportunity that opened up because of the Korean War. The nation was facing possible war with China, and they needed pilots, thus, the path to pilothood was shortened.

Allen was the family’s pride embodied in a 6’2” muscular frame. You could recognize his laugh in an instant when you entered a room, and he had married a beautiful, Norwegian blonde, Viola. As a young boy struggling to deal with a torrent of hormones coursing through his body, Viola was a goddess, and Allen was a God -- Viola was proof of it. Only a God could attract and hold such a beautiful woman, and I had told her as much, even as an 8-year old boy. “I hope I can marry someone as pretty as you when I grow up,” I had said. She threw her head back and cackled with delight. You could recognize Viola’s laugh a block away. They were a beautiful couple, and now, she was abandoned.

I rarely saw Allen when I was growing up, but they were meaningful times. In 1957, while stationed in Japan he had contracted tuberculosis, and spent a year in Fitzimmons Army hospital in Denver, Colorado. He had been flying Boeing Globe masters -- a 4-engined prop-driven cargo plan comparable to the passenger Globemaster that the airlines used. The story we got from Viola is that the pilots were uncomfortable with their oxygen masks and would pull the tube out and stick it in their mouths, thus creating a path for the TB germ to spread. TB was common in the occupation troops in Japan, mostly because the prostitutes were infected with it -- but nobody ever mentioned that. .

President Eisenhower was there at the hospital at the same time, recovering from a massive heart attack ( the public had been told it was a mild heart attack -- but that’s another story).

Viola had TB also, but spent less time in the hospital. Both had surgery. Part of Allen’s lung was removed. It left a scar half way around his body.

While in the hospital, he decided two things: he would build a high-fidelity record player when he got out of the hospital, and, he would take me on a canoe trip to Northern Minnesota. Oh, and he also reenlisted in the Air Force. He didn’t talk to Viola about it, he just did it. He told her afterward. She was furious. She didn’t want to stay in the military. He did. It was a bold move on his part, and it demonstrated where his heart was. Military life was a good life for a young officer, especially in the Air Force. There was adventure, and there was one long party. In exchange for his enlistment, the Air Force agreed to send him back to college to get his degree, at the University of Oklahoma.

The stereo record player was a Heath Kit. You got a chassis and a box of resisters and tubes, knobs and condensers, and you wired the whole thing together. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard coming out of a speaker -- it’s still superior to today’s transistor amplifiers. Of course, there was only one speaker because stereo was the next step in the technology process. For now, Allen played an album of music about Paris, France, over and over. I can still hear the music in my mind. I have never been able to reproduce that clarity in a stereo.

The canoe trip was the other goal. Mom told me about it. She said Allen wanted to take me on a canoe trip when he comes home. I had no clue to what he had in mind, though I had been on a canoe trip in the Boy scouts. It was just an overnight trip with my Scout trip during my two week Summer Camp at Many Point Scout Camp in Northwestern Minnesota. Allen wanted to canoe the Superior National Forest -- later named and changed to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Today’s canoers would be shocked to hear what canoeing was like then. A few years before, Northern Minnesota had been a logging operation. There were railroads, but no roads. Then, the loggers left, the railroad tracks were taken up, and the tracks were replaced with gravel roads. The loggers left a system of portages between an area of lakes a hundred miles long along the Canadian border. Resorters had set up business to cater to sportsman fisherman, and a new breed of outdoor business -- the canoe outfitter -- had set up shop. The Superior National Forest, as it was named, was so huge that the resorters couldn’t possibly access it entirely, they operated around the fringes of it. I was unaware of it. It was a wilderness, and to really get into it, you had to use a canoe, and you had to have the right equipment, because you had to portage every pound of it, time and time again on your journey -- but that’s another story.

Allen was missing.

I went downstairs later. My Father was sitting in a chair staring blankly. It was not unlike him. To others, he was a quiet, gentle man. To us, he was simply distant. I took my shower, gathered my clothes together and prepared to return to school, 280 miles North in Bemidji, Minnesota. It was a long trip, but like so many college students, I came home as much as possible. My old friends were here. It was hard making new friends, and I valued my old friends too much to replace them. Of course, they were all married now. I was the bachelor outsider -- a threat to wives and husbands alike. I was not invited to many parties. But there were some who could break away for some dedicated beer drinking. Now, the weekend was over. It was Sunday. My trek North was imminent. I bid goodbye to my Mother, and was gone, leaving her and my Father to deal with their grief.

In my own mind, nothing was resolved, nothing had really happened. Until we knew what the facts were, I would not draw any conclusions, I would wait for more information, then I would do whatever it is I would do. For now, Allen was missing. I was concerned. I was worried, but I was also aware that he might walk out of the jungle tomorrow. We would not know until then. In fact, we would not know for a long time.

CHAPTER 2

The years after Allen was declared MIA are not really notable for activity. The war went on. His fate was not known. In fact, in reality, we had no information and could not act until we did, therefore, we did nothing. We waited. We went on with our lives, and waited for those two Air Force officers to come back and tell us the rest of the story they had started to tell us on March 20, 1968. For me, it was easy; Allen was never a daily part of my life. He occasionally dropped into my life, briefly. While those occasions were notable, and celebratory, they were not anticipated, and therefore, he was not at the forefront of my consciousness. I went on with my life. My parents dealt with the Air Force, and reported any news to me. I felt that anything I did in that regard was redundant, and I deferred to my parents in that regard. I felt no urgency, and no responsibility. I waited for news. I could not worry, I could not grieve, until I knew what reality was. Until then I waited for news.

Denial is a very strong state of mind, that preserves and protects. It preserves sanity by postponing disaster and trauma, and it protects for the same reason. I know now, that is what I was doing. I was in denial. I was postponing my own concern, my anxiety, my frustration, and ultimately, my grief. Nothing had changed until I could know more.

For others, it was not so easy. My parents were in constant communication with the Air Force. My parents wanted more information, the Air Force wanted more information, and so they corresponded. The Air Force wanted photos of Allen to help them identify him from news photos of Prisoners of War (POW’s) coming from North Vietnam. The Air Force was genuinely concerned about their men. My parents sent them every photo they had.

On the other hand, the Air Force, was not entirely forthcoming about the circumstance of Allen’s loss. They told my parents that he was flying across Laos from Thailand to Da Nang, Vietnam, when he disappeared from RADAR. In fact, he disappeared because he descended below the RADAR horizon to patrol a road in Laos. We were not supposed to be in Laos. Laos was a neutral country. The North Vietnam Army was there in great force, in fact, it was later learned that four divisions were below Allen when he swooped to tree-top level that day. More importantly, an anti-aircraft brigade had been moved down the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos from North Vietnam. They had new and devastating weapons that could chew an aircraft to pieces. The area was just across the Laos border from Khe Sanh, where U.S Marines had been under siege by the North Vietnamese troops. Allen’s unit -- the 82nd Airborne -- had been moved there, but because FACs were coordinated by a theater air-control center located in Okinawa, rather than by the Unit he was attached to as Air Force Liaison ( spotter for Air Force bombers and ground support aircraft) the 82nd Airborne Troops never learned that he was missing..

For Allen’s wife, Viola, and their two children, not knowing his fate was especially hard. They did not have the luxury of denial; their lives were immediately affected. They had to move out of Army base housing and back home to her family. She had to manage details of their lives that she had never had to deal with before. Money was not a problem because she continued to receive his salary. He would be promoted while missing several times to increase that salary. The Air Force takes care of its own..

Ultimately, denial did play a major role in their lives, especially Viola. Initially, she was distraught and devastated. They had only recently adopted two children after years of hoping to have their own. Allen and Viola were 38 years old. Their daughter Leslie was an infant, their son was four. He would have distant memories of his adopted Father, but his life would be devastated by his Father’s absence. He was briefly, informally adopted by his successful Uncle, who was killed in a plane crash. After a troubled adolescence, he eventually ended up in prison where he could get help with profound emotional problems.

Viola never married again. She eventually dealt with the trauma by sublimating the entire issue. In her own words, she decided he was never coming back. In fact, she didn’t know, and she would never marry again.

About a year after Allen was shot down, according to tapes that are now public, newly-elected President Nixon sat down with his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Nixon had gained office partly by claiming to have a “secret plan” to get out of Vietnam. Now, he told Kissinger he wanted to pull out over the course of the next year. “If you do”, said Kissinger, “ and it goes badly, you will never be re-elected in 1972.” As a result, the war was deliberately prolonged for another 4 years. Wives like Viola, her children, Allen’s siblings and parents and friends, would be tortured by their state of limbo, prisoners of war in North Vietnam would be sentenced to an additional four years of torture, 20,000 American boys would die, and another 200,000 would be wounded, all to ensure the re-election of a politician and his party. It would be just one of many betrayals the families and POWs would experience, by just one of many levels of government and society. There would be many more, accompanied by profound expressions of sympathy and concern. Already, society’s vultures were beginning to circle over the dying families.

CHAPTER 3

For me, the years after Allen was shot down were not preoccupied with fear and anxiety. I had returned to college. I could, and did put Allen on the shelf. There was nothing to grieve, because he was not dead. There was no point in becoming obsessed with fear over his fate, because there was no information to suggest he had died, or survived. He had simply flown out one day and never came back. I debated in my mind the various options that were possible, perhaps even that he had decided the War sucked, and had flown his plane into the Thai jungle and shacked up with some Asian beauty on a tropical island. It was easier to think of him that way. Imagining that he might be a prisoner, and that perhaps he was being tortured, was not constructive. Denial is a strong in

stinct. It fends off a lot of demons. I suppose denial is what I practiced. In my mind, Allen would be coming home, I was only waiting for the news.

In the meantime, I had my own life to live. Uncle Sam was paying my tuition courtesy of the G.I. Bill, and I had classes, money, and girls to worry about -- not necessarily in that order. The college was in a small Northern Minnesota town -- Bemidji -- with a population of 10,000 people. The G.I. bill didn’t pay for everything, and I got a job at the local grocery store to pay for rent and food. The college was the root of all evil for some townies, and college students were outsiders, or ought to be according to some people, including, I think, my boss. One day I discovered that he had scheduled me for 70 hours of work the following week. When I protested that it was finals week and I had tests to study for, he stated in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t like it, I could look for another job.

Three days later I had signed up all of his employees for a union election, which was eventually successful. That led to an effort to unionize the other two stores in town, because without them, we had no bargaining leverage -- they could always undercut the Union wages. That led to a media effort to support the unionizers, and that included writing opinion pieces for the newspaper, which to my surprise, were published in the college student newspaper. Seeing an opportunity for even greater public access, I managed to become managing editor, giving me effective control of the paper.

Those were fun, but foolish times. My professor later told someone that if he had known what I was like he would have made me Executive editor. He was not familiar with me, he said, because I never came to class.

By this time the anti-war movement was in full stride around the country. Martin Luther King had been shot, The cities had erupted in racial rioting. Bobby Kennedy had been shot. Lyndon Johnson -- suckered into expanding the war by ever-demanding Generals, had declared he would not seek a second term. The Democratic convention was chaotic, with rioting and bedlam in the streets outside. Random bombers were killing police and civilians. Soldiers were being vilified as the public became aware that War was not a campaign of good guys and bad guys, it was drafted young men desperately trying not to die, killing anyone who was deemed a threat.

In Bemidji, none of this was happening. Television was limited -- had the student body been interested in world events. The local newspaper was little more than a shopper for local businesses, and I had control of the student newspaper. In Bemidji there were no riots, no protests, no bombings. No one occupied the administration building, as happened on many other campuses. In Bemidji, we conducted petition campaigns to pressure the Vietnamese to provide humane treatment for our Prisoners of War in Vietnam’s hands. Later, we learned, the language in the petitions was very offensive, but we didn’t know that then.

I graduated in 1970. Suffice it to say that when I graduated, it was time to leave town.

My job as managing editor of the student newspaper got me a job as news editor of a suburban weekly newspaper. I had my own newspaper, and my own town to torment. Anybody who wanted anything in the paper had to go through me -- teachers, politicians, businessmen. I treated the town as if it was Washington D.C.. I found corruption in the City government and got a City department administrator fired. I held up the grass roots politicians for all to see, for what they really were -- incompetent, narrow-minded wannabe politicians. They hated me, but they feared me. It was a good feeling. No one should have such power; but, the money was awful, so I quit after two years and took a good-paying job doing the employee newspaper for local utility.

This was the job I had envisioned when I left college. Being a union man, having been abused by a manager, I knew what good communications could do for management, just as Goerbels knew what he could do for Hitler. My goals were more benign, but I was confident . The job was offered to me as being part of a radical knew approach to employee communications, and I accepted it. Of course, to them, radical meant something different from my definition of the word. I quickly took control of my newspaper and through arrogance and insubordination, turned it into a force -- for good, of course, but management did not like losing control of their organ. At that time, utility managements were made up of engineers who were simply waiting their turn to be CEO or Chairman. My Vice-President knew nothing about what his people did. He only knew that I caused trouble when I wouldn’t do favors for his fellow executives. I was on a mission. Confounding my critics, I earned international recognition from my peer organization, the International Association of Business Communicators. It was not good enough. In the end, my boss told me that either I had to leave, or my Vice-President had to leave.

Unfortunately, this took place during one of the worst stock market crashes since the depression. I was thrown into the street at a time when there were 200 applicants for every job opening in my field . After a year my unemployment benefits ran out, and I went into real estate sales.

What does all of this have to do with prisoners of war? Absolutely nothing. The Vietnam War had ended mercifully shortly before I left NSP. The prisoners had been released and Allen was not among them, nor was there any news of his fate. The following year, South Vietnam was overrun by the North. The country literally turned its back on Vietnam, both literally and figuratively. However, the missing men, and my love of crusades were on a collision course.

CHAPTER 4

You do not cry when there is no bad news, nor do you celebrate when there is no good news. You simply go on with your life, waiting for the day when you can let those feelings out, when the news comes. For me, that was no problem. I had a life to live. By now, I had a wife and child. Real estate was not my calling but I was proving that I could be a salesman, and eventually, I earned my broker’s license and started my own real estate company. I had my first house and yard. A small dog kept us amused after his role as our surrogate child. Allen was in my "hold" basket, on my desk, waiting for news. In my heart, I knew he was dead, but I held a place in my heart and in my head for news of him, for some explanation of what had happened.

But, for Allen’s wife, and for the Government, closure became ever more important. It had been more than ten years since Allen had disappeared, with no news, and no hope. She was not suffering financially, because she continued to get his Colonels’ salary, or a portion of it. But there were two children growing up. There was insurance to settle. Someone had to make the decision to declare the men gone, never to return. That process began in 1978. In 1979 a memorial service was planned for Allen at a small chapel at a nearby historical military site.

I stopped over to see Viola -- something I did too little over the previous ten years. She had once expressed concern over what would happen if Allen came home physically disabled, or worse, psychologically disabled. I took that at the time to mean that if he was not coming home whole, she would prefer that he not come home. Looking back, it was a conclusion convenient to my own needs at the time, because it relieved me of responsibility for her and the children. Raising two children had been hard for her, especially since she could not pursue a life partner to help her. She was sentenced to life without parole, in her mind. She needed closure. She needed it much more than she was willing to admit, even to herself. She had always claimed that she had put Allen out of her mind after he was shot down, because, she said, she knew he was dead. In fact, she had simply blotted thoughts of him out of her mind, because they were too difficult to deal with.

We talked about Allen, and about the service planned for him. I told her I didn’t like the idea of a service. Limbo had been a comfortable place for me. For Viola it had been a place of misery, but for me it allowed me to not deal with it. Now, they were asking me to make a public gesture of closure, by attending the memorial service, and I didn’t like it.

I told her it felt like we were turning our backs on Allen, and that is what I felt at the time. So long as there was a fantasy scenario, so long as I could believe that Allen might be sitting in a hammock somewhere in Thailand, I did not want to be forced to a conclusion.

I thought about Allen often. I thought about the canoe trip he had taken me on, about the newer car he had sold me at a steep discount, about the stereo he had built in our parent’s basement, about the time we had gone horseback riding in Oklahoma while he was attending college there. He was still a living memory. Allen never lost his baby fat, and had a face much like many slightly overweight men. Sometimes I would see someone with a military haircut walking down the street and would almost become convinced it was Allen -- to the point where I would follow the person if I could, to be sure. One of my fantasies was that Allen had deserted and was back in the States, but would not contact us.

Viola tried, but failed to convince me that we had to go ahead with the service. My parents also tried to convince me. I understood their arguments, I just didn’t like them. In the end, the Government declared Allen dead, and settled his back salary. The insurance companies paid off his life insurance policies. And the service was held at a small Tudor limestone chapel at a nearby historic army fort overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers.

It was a nice day for the service -- warm, and bright. The chapel was filled with people I didn’t know, except for my immediate family. My parents had been close to the other families with missing men, and many of them were there. I didn’t know them because I had deferred to my parents in these matters. My parents had helped out by attending public events, and making themselves available when the Press wanted to talk to a family member. Over time, more and more families wanted to turn their backs on this miserable subject, but My parents had continued to help where they could.

The chapel was also full of veterans, especially Vietnam veterans, who felt sorry for the families, and wanted to help them in some way. They also carried unfinished memories. They also were vulnerable, though they probably didn’t realize it.

The service was simple. A few hymns. A few words about Allen. Finally, an Air Force chaplain spoke. I was not impressed. The whole event smacked of amateurism. It was small -town posturing. It reminded me of modern churches who try and convey their message through rock music, performed by church members. No matter how talented they might be, it’s inevitably bad music. At some of today’s new-age churches professional musicians are paid to provide entertainment. I’ve attended some of them -- for the music alone. But the others, who try and create their own bands from within the congregation, lose all credulity. The sight of young people, or slightly older than young people trying to be cool while singing "we are his lambs" accompanied by bad guitars and moribund drummers makes me want to run screaming from the church.

That thought began to creep over me as I watched these well-meaning people attempt to produce a meaningful ceremony. It was not a solemn religious ceremony. It was people trying to be solemn. It was not a smooth, organized event, it was awkward and uncomfortable. Allen deserved better than this, I thought. He had given eighteen years of his life to the Air Force. He had been asked to fly a Cesnna over enemy troops at treetop level and without hesitating, he had done so, and had been shot down. He was a hero. He deserved a ceremony at Arlington Cemetery, not a backwater church on an abandoned military post. He deserved a eulogy by a general or the President, not these clumsy, disorganized, amateur VFW volunteers.

I could feel anger welling up in my throat, and I turned my thoughts away from the service to maintain control of myself. My throat felt tight and rigid, and dry. Then, when I felt I had a handle on myself, I turned back to the ceremony. Eventually, it came to the chaplain.

The chaplain was typical of what I felt auxiliary troops to be in the military. You can put them in uniforms and make them act cool, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t really make them cool. They are not the well-educated officers and pilots. They are not the generals and admirals. They are the people who were convinced against all logic to stay in the military after their first enlistment was up. They are people from small towns who joined the military to be a man, because they were not men and weren‘t sure they could be. They didn’t know how to dress cool, act cool, or talk cool, and for that reason they felt comfortable in the military. Here, they were family . Here they got respect, be it forced. Here, they were promoted, no matter how incompetent they might be, because getting people to stay was difficult work. They knew you had no personal freedom. They knew they were at the mercy of other incompetent, insecure people, they knew they would always be poorly paid, frequently uprooted, frequently forced to live in squalid neighborhoods near military bases. The doctors were second-rate, the dentists were second-rate, the chaplains were a blatant contradiction, assigned to the job of keeping men mentally fit to kill other men.

Like chaplains everywhere, be they military or civilian, they are able to rationalize their work to find meaning in it, overlooking the obvious contradiction in their work to focus on the tragedy they must deal with, and eventually become inured too. Like all military men, they dress in uniforms to hide their lack of sophistication, their education, their origin, and their intelligence -- or lack of it. Some succeed. Many enlisted men look proud and confident in their uniforms, but others are like donkeys pretending to be stallions. They just can’t pull it off.

That thought struck me as the chaplain walked up to the podium. He was not the gaunt priest. He was stocky , with a generous serving of baby fat in his face and profile. He struck me as a person who had never missed a meal in his life, who knew all the words of solace, but never felt them. A simple man, participating in the military as a reservist this day, giving another sermon about another missing man.

I don’t remember what he said to begin with. I was first angry about his appearance. He was not a warrior priest, he was a plump bureaucrat. He wore those awful military-issue black shoes -- like cops wear, because they’re durable and take a good shine. They were polished -- I knew he took great personal pride in his shoes. His uniform was crisp and clean, if not tailored, but his pants were an inch too short, exposing the tops of his shoes and his socks, like a hick farmer. His sleeves were too short and he obviously wore a short-sleeved shirt, because there were no shirtsleeves showing beyond his coat sleeves.

"Is this the best they could do?", I thought. "Is this how it ends after you lose your life in the service of your country, a clumsy speech by a plump reservist chaplain who would never look comfortable in a suit, much less a uniform/" I suppose I wanted to be angry. I suppose I was being much to hard on these people who after all, had volunteered to help give a dignified public farewell to a lowly pilot. But I needed to be angry because I was being forced to be there, to say farewell to someone I was not ready give up.

" When I think about Allen I like to think about him in a happy setting, flying his airplane through the clouds," the chaplain said. I clenched my teeth. I tried to swallow but my throat had become thick. I could feel control slipping away from me. Thinking of Allen? This guy never knew Allen, probably never saw a picture of him. To me he was trying to envision a cartoon of Allen flying in a little toy plane in the sky. It was an outrage. Allen was no bus driver. He flew cargo planes at treetop level on night missions over Laos before the war. He had been flying light civilian aircraft at tree top level in broad daylight over enemy territory when he was shot down. He had risked his life to save pilots who had been shot down. Now this plump priest wanted me to imagine Allen flying for fun, like flying an amusement park ride.

I lowered my head so others would not see me. My eyes filled with tears and I knew I was not going to recover my composure. I just wanted to get through the service, It ended mercifully soon, with the chaplain’s benediction, and we began to file out of the church, the families first. I walked down the gantlet with my head lowered, as though solemn, fighting to keep control of myself. I made it to the door of the church. Viola had turned and waited there, to thank the others who had come. She was calm and composed, seemingly comfortable in her hostess role at the door. She had stopped one couple to say a few words to them and I took the opportunity to make a wide berth around her and out of the church, but as I went by I looked up at her, and she saw my face. At that moment I lost all control and sobbed. I walked quickly to a spot away from the church where I felt comfortable that no one would approach me.

I watched the other family members talking outside the church to many who had come to be a part of the event, to help the families find comfort in the loss of their loved one, but I could not be apart of it. They saw that I was having difficulty. They thought I was crying over the loss of my brother. In fact, I was crying because it was such a pathetic service for such a great man. When I had gained enough composure I walked to me car and left.

CHAPTER 5

I first met Dale Hanley in a cemetery. My parents asked me to transport them to a ceremony there. I had not been active with the families’ organization, but my parents had agreed on several occasions to be interviewed by local television and print reporters. I was unaware of what to expect.

It must have been in the Fall. I remember that sun was bright, and dead leaves littered the cemetery ground. The day was bright and sunny -- typical fall weather. The cemetery was small -- located on the edge of an international airport. I can’t remember what the ceremony was about, but it involved a small group of people, just a few family members and a few POW/MIA activists. There was no formal organized ceremony -- the group just gathered together in the midst of the tombstones. The family members were mostly the parents of the missing men -- like my parents. They were not yet too old to get out and around.. My parents were about 75 years, and had asked me to drive me here more to get me involved than out of real need. The brothers and sisters of the missing tended, like me, to not be actively involved. When the group was quiet, Hanley began to speak.

Hanley was not a charismatic person. He was a retired gunnery sergeant from the U.S. Marine Corps, and looked and sounded the part. He was not tall, but stout, with a balding head. He had a round face and stub nose typical of the Irish he descended from, and he had the kind of gravelly voice that you would expect from a Hollywood sergeant, but was actually the result of years of chain-smoking. He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with white tennis shoes. He had been suffering from a weak stomach lining and a nylon net had been placed under the muscles in his midsection to contain it, but instead, his stomach bulged out, not like a beer belly, but higher, as if he had stuffed a watermelon under his T-shirt.

The chain-smoking, clothing, voice, and stooping stature gave him the appearance of an aging small-town punk. When the group had gathered together, Hanley stepped back a few steps -- as if he was uncomfortable being so close to them -- and began to speak in his gravely voice, in short sentences, pausing at each comma to take a short breath. His speech was short. He did not waste time leading into his message or engage in jokes to relax his audience. He said that when the French had been defeated in Vietnam in 1957 at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese had not released all of the French prisoners after the French forces left Vietnam. Instead, he said, some of them had been sighted at a dairy farm near Hanoi. It was evidence, he said, that the Vietnamese may have also held back some of the American POW’s at the end of the Vietnam War, and that they may still be alive.
There had been newspaper stories to that affect. When Vietnamese refugees began leaving Vietnam in boats, and were resettled in America, many of them told of seeing American servicemen living in Vietnam. It had alarmed some of the family members, but the Defense Intelligence Agency -- an intelligence agency charged with correlating intelligence information from the various intelligence organizations within the Government and military, had chalked the reports off to defectors who had stayed behind in Vietnam willingly, after the Americans had left.

Hanley’s message was greeted by silence. It was as if the families had pretended not to have heard him, partly because -- being Minnesotans -- they didn’t want to offend him. They went along with the program -- whatever it was -- and remained stoic and polite.

One of the non-family members present was a tall, powerfully-built man about 35 years old. His name was Brian Burke. He was dressed like Hanley, in Jeans and a T-shirt with a POW/MIA logo on it. His size alone was intimidating, but he had a gentle presence and was not loud or overbearing, but very polite and considerate. When Hanley was done talking, it was announced that the names of the men from Minnesota missing in action would be read aloud. Burke stepped forward and took out a list from his pocket and began to read aloud the names of the 40 or so men, part of more than 2,600 missing in Vietnam and Laos.

"Harold Aalgard, Paul Carlson.." he read aloud. At that point he broke down and began to sob. "That’s Brian Burke", my Mother said. "He has a difficult time dealing with this. His twin brother was killed in Vietnam"

He turned and walked away, stopping a short distance away to compose himself. Someone else took the list and began reading the names in his place. I looked over at Burke. It seemed odd that such a powerfully-built man should be so sensitive. I was somewhat familiar with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but I had never encountered it. I watched Burke sob uncontrollably and thought to myself, "he’s crazy as a loon". Burke’s inability to control his emotions was a characteristic of his condition, and he might just as easily have exploded in rage, as he sometimes did. He was known as a "character" by those casually acquainted with the group -- a fact that tended to undermine the group’s credibility. It was hard to take them seriously, when their membership included people who were obviously disturbed.

Burke and his twin brother had been serving in the Army in Vietnam, but in different units. Burke had been granted permission to visit his brother, but while Burke was on his way there his brother’s unit had been attacked and his brother was killed. Burke had been under constant treatment at a nearby Veterans Administration hospital, and had been admitted several times. He had been employed by the postal service, but was eventually laid off and declared totally disabled due to his emotional difficulties.

One of the family members went over to console Burke. She was the brother of a missing man. Her name was Joan O’Brien. She looked short next to Burke, but she was not. She was slender, had short dark hair, and a round face like Hanley. She was well-dressed, and most men would consider her pretty. She was a friend of Hanley and his wife, and I would later learn she was very active with the families. The two of them stayed off to the side of the group while the ceremony concluded.

After the ceremony, my parents paused to thank the volunteers who had conducted the ceremony, and then I took them back to my car and drove them home. I was not impressed, and I made no effort to contact the group.

Sometime after that I stopped Viola’s house for a cup of coffee and some chat. It was a new house. After Allen had been declared legally dead his insurance had been settled, and pay that had been withheld all the years he was missing was turned over to Viola. One of the first things she did was to build a new home. It was upscale, but not expensive. She had taken the design from a magazine photo and a local architect had drawn up the plans. We at on stools around a kitchen island, chatting about family and life’s personal twists, AT some point she shoved an envelope across the counter and said, " what do you think of this stuff"?

I opened the envelope. It contained a copy of a news paper clipping and a letter. It was from a former Air Force Intelligence officer now living in Thailand. His letter said that sources he was familiar with had indicated that a group of Americans were being held by Lao forces inside Laos. It gave several names, but Allen was not among them. The letter asked for money to facilitate more information from these sources.

"He wants money," she said. I just throw the letters away. "I figure these guys are just con artists".

" I agree," I said. Anytime information like this is accompanied by a plea for cash the credibility of the entire story becoms suspect."

"what do you think?" she said, "do you think there are any guys alive over there?"

I was totally out of touch with the subject. I had read newspaper reports of some of the Vietnamese boat people saying they saw Americans in Vietnam after the war, but these were usually people living openly, and it was known that some men who had fought with the Vietnamese to save themselves had stayed after the way. If I had thought there were men being held against their will I certainly would not have told Viola.

She watched me read the letter, chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking a cup of coffee.

I read the newspaper clipping. It was a story about an active-duty Army Major and a Sergeant who had filed a lawsuit against the President in 1986, for not taking efforts to rescue American servicemen they believed were being held in Laos.

" It seems strange that an active-duty officer would effectively end his career like this for something frivolous," I said.

The officer was Major Mark Smith. The Sergeant was Melvin Mcntyre, from Texas. Smith was a "mustang" officer, meaning, he had been promoted from the enlisted ranks. He had been a prisoner of war himself, held by Lao forces during the war until he was rescued. In pain from a festering wound, he had been chained in a hole in the ground for a year. When men were missing in action or prisoners of war they were normally promoted in rank to increase the income of their families. Smith had been promoted to Warrant officer, then Major. Allen was a Major when shot down, but had been promoted to Colonel while missing.

The article said Smith had been stationed in Thailand to train Thai soldiers. During that time he had conducted an intelligence operation, communicating with Lao sources, who said, essentially, what the letter had said -- that Americans were being held in Laos
.
"What do you think?", she said.

"I’d want to know more", I said. "I don’t doubt that he thinks there are men being held, but that doesn’t make it true. I have a hard time believing that the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs would not be doing something if they thought there were really men there." Viola had been part of the "brotherhood". The service takes care of its own she had often said. And it was true. Too many men had lost good friends, too many felt guilty that they had survived while their friends were killed. They could not turn their backs on living prisoners. They simply could not live with themselves.

At that point I changed the subject and went back to talk of family and friends.

In the following months I thought about the Major who had sued the President -- A Republican President. What was the story behind this man? Why would he effectively end his career this way? Was his career finished? Was this his last hoorah?

My own life was in no better shape. My marriage had evolved into a form of cold cohabitation revolving around providing for our daughter’s education and upbringing. My daughter, Sarah, was a brilliant student. Now nine years old, she was years beyond her grade level in school. She had a 4th-grade teacher who favored the "boys" and suppressed Sarah in the classroom, making her read in the back of the classroom while the rest discussed subjects that Sarah was very advanced in. He Didn’t like it that she always raised her hand when questions were asked, and apparently felt that she made the other students look stupid. I knew this was sending the wrong message to her and was afraid she might decide that "dumbing down" might be the smart thing to do, socially. I sought out information about other schools, and eventually came across an adult education class provided for adults in the evening at our local High School. I talked to the two women who taught the class and explained my problem. I wanted to keep challenging Sarah and provide positive reinforcement for being smarter than the other kids.

One of the teachers came up with an idea. Sarah could not enroll in the class, but I could, and I could bring Sarah. They would arrange for a grad student from the University of Minnesota to coach her.

It worked well. Twice a week we attended the evening class, and the grad student would take sarah off to another room where she was taught Algebra. They went through the entire basic algebra textbook over the course of the next few months. When classes ended, I took her to a local 2-year college, where she took the entrance examination. She scored equivalent to typical college freshmen.

My marriage continued to go downhill. My wife and I were rarely speaking to each other. I had started a business that had quickly gone downhill due to a severe economic recession. I had opened a real estate office just months before the Government raised mortgage rates to 18% in an effort to strangle inflation. It succeeded in stopping inflation, , but it also strangled many small businesses like mine. Credit dried up, and absolutely nobody planned to sell their house if they didn’t have to.

I eventually closed the office and sold my franchise. I worked for two years as a real estate sales agent for a large local real estate company, but considering my failure to succeed as a broker, I had trouble looking people in the face -- particularly disconcerting to potential customers. One day, one of my associate agents , in the course of a conversation, said, " you should be a real estate appraiser, John, You’d be good at it." I realized she was right. It was the analysis and accounting part of the business that I really enjoyed and excelled at. I had taken accounting courses to prepare for the opening of my business, and I had learned every facet of the business, including not only recruiting and management of agents, but also processing and closing sales. I sent letters out to local real estate firms, and one replied. It seems that there was currently a surge in business, and nobody but one company had the time or inclination to train a new appraiser. I took his offer of employment, and began learning how to appraise. It meant for the first time in ten years, I had a steady income
During the course of the business debacle we sold our house in the Minneapolis and moved to the suburb of Burnsville, where there would better schools for Sarah. But facing failure, and the prospect of living out my life with a person who despised me for making her look like a loser, I began to seek out activities to bring me into contact with people to interact with. I continued to hunt and fish with some old high school buddies, but they gradually drifted apart due to alcoholism and personal frictions. I was becoming more and more isolated. It was at this time that I decided to check out the POW/MIA organizations.

CHAPTER 6

What I found was that there was a counter movement to the original established POW/MIA families organization. In 1968, a story was published about American prisoners in Vietnam, generating interest in the subject. A group of family members of captures servicemen took an offer from businessman Ross Perot, to take them to Hanoi to see their loved ones. Prior to that, captive servicemen had been treated horribly. Most died in captivity from dysentery. They were beaten and tortured routinely. Perot loaded the families on his private Boeing 727 jet, and hopped from City to City in Southeast Asia in an attempt to gain permission to land in Hanoi. He did not succeed in that aspect of his stunt. Bit it got the point across that the the captives had value to the Vietnamese. Thereafter, captives were expeditiously moved up the Hanoi Trail to prisoner of war (POW) prisons, the most famous being the "Hanoi Hilton" where Senator John McCain -- among others-- was held. Ross Perot’s stunt was extremely successful in keeping the prisoners alive, though they were still tortured into signing confessions.

This was the first time the family members had been able to communicate with each other. The Government had deliberately made it difficult to do so, and had discouraged the families from speaking publicly. Encouraged by the publicity and the concern it generated for their loved ones, the families formed an organization for family members of missing servicemen, called the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing In Southeast Asia. It was formally incorporated in 1970, though some local organizations -- the Minnesota League of POW/MIA Families included, had incorporated earlier.

I did not contact the National League. My parents had a copy of a newsletter published by a Minnesota group, called Minnesota Won’t Forget POW/MIA . It was a ridiculous newsletter. It had a hand-drawn masthead, and was collection of newspaper clippings and typed copy that really had little to do with the issue, and did nothing to educate its readers. However, it did have a phone number, and I called and found out that the next meeting of the group was at a Veterans of Foreign Wars ( VFW) post in a suburb of St Paul -- Roseville. I decided to attend, and see who these people were.

The post was a 1-story stucco building in an isolated location near some railroad tracks. The VFW, and its less-exclusive counterpart the American Legion, were established as organizations after WWI. Their primary purpose was to promote the welfare and benefits of veterans. This they did, by virtue of their numbers and their political influence. They are not organizations of all veterans, being made up primarily of enlisted men. Officers found little in common with these men. Part of the reason for their rapid expansion was derived from the fact that in every small town in America, in post-prohibition times, the Veterans clubs were a way to get around restrictive alcohol laws. Prohbition was over, but liquor stores and particularly taverns were not welcome in small-town America. Nobody said no to the veterans though, and veterans are a thirsty lot. In many cases, the VFW was the only place for many miles where one could get a drink other than a cold beer.

When I walked into the VFW it was not unlike the VFW I had patronized while going to school in Bemidji. It was dark, smoky, and reeked of beer. The décor was posh, with carpeted floors, and there was a long and elegant bar. There was a blacboard behind the bar indicating that the lunch special that day had been a "Juicy-Lucy" hamburger for $1.50. There was a dance floor indicating that live entertainment was sometimes available, but tonight was just the huddle of regulars around the bar.

After my eyes adjusted to the light, I walked up to the bartender and asked where the POW/MIA meeting was.

" They’re in back", he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

I walked to the back of the lounge and saw a door, which I presumed was the meeting room, though it had no marking. I turned the knob and opened the door slightly to peer inside.

Cigarette smoke poured through door. At first I thought there might be a fire, but as I peered into the room I realized that almost everyone in the room was smoking a cigarette. There were about 12 persons in the room, seated near a round table. They all turned and looked at me. Nobody spoke. After staring at me for what seemed like a very long time, they continued their discussion, which concerned assigning volunteers to attend various veterans events where they were to man an information booth and sell POW/MIA merchandise -- primarily T-shirts and bracelets. The bracelets had become the smbol of the POW/MIA movement. The idea was that you would adop a missing man and wear a bracelet with his name on it until he was accounted for, or came home.