After the Flag Has Been Folded (37 page)

Mama could be mad at me all she wanted, but she couldn't deny that the reason I wouldn't let go of this is because I'd inherited her lockjaw grit and determination. She couldn't turn me away as she had when I was a child with her usual flippant rhetorical remark, “Why do you want to know all that for? You writing a book?”

Yes, ma'am. As it turns out, I am.

My incessant questions gave Mama the thing that had been denied her and the thousands of women like her—permission to talk about how difficult her life had been as a war widow.

As world news focused on the war in Iraq, Mama finally began to open up about how abandoned she'd felt by her country and her family.

“I didn't know what to do after your Daddy died,” Mama told me. “Once he was buried, the Army was gone. Their whole attitude was ‘We've done our duty.' I didn't know what to do. I'd been an Army wife since I was sixteen. I didn't know how to be a civilian. Where do you go? Where do you live? Where do you take three children to grow up? I didn't have a home. Hell, I'm surprised we survived at all. Shit, why didn't somebody help me through all of that?”

I'm glad Mama didn't expect any answers from me because I certainly didn't have any.

“I just don't know how everything got so screwed up,” she added.

It was in that same conversation—the one we had there in her living room shortly after I returned from Vietnam and following her retirement party—that Mama revealed to me a long-held secret. “When your Daddy went to Vietnam I'd had a dream that your father was going to be killed. I knew from that moment on that it was going to happen. I wanted to stop it. But I couldn't.”

Mama said she had been around the Army long enough to know that once Daddy was dead, she was on her own, completely.

“Once your sponsor's dead, you're not part of the Army anymore. Once he's dead, you're totally cut off. I wanted to tell the Army: But you killed my sponsor! I think about that all the time. Especially now, what's going to happen to all these guys who are coming back to Fort Benning from Iraq now and those who aren't? And their families?”

There's simply no way for a family to prepare themselves for the enduring loss war creates. Grief counseling might help some, but it can't erase the pain.

“I've always felt some loss,” she said. “Even now.”

Several times that night Mama commented on how surprised and glad she was to see me at her retirement party. We laughed over and over about Frank being back behind bars again. We talked about her plans to move to a beach house, in Westport, near Linda. And I told her about how I had sensed Daddy's presence at the base of Dragon Mountain and again as I stood looking over the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

Before we turned in that night, Mama told me that she thought I favored Daddy the most. “You have your daddy's eyes,” she said.

Captain Osborne told me the same thing. But I suspect Mama's comment was motivated more by the way I view the world now than by the blue of my eyes.

 

When I visited Mama that summer in her new beach house, she whipped up a batch of banana pudding with a golden meringue topping. It's a treat she's made only a half dozen times since Daddy died. Daddy loved banana pudding, black coffee, and peaches with cream. He enjoyed fishing with Frank and speeding through the pineapple fields on a moped he'd restored, with Linda perched between his legs and me holding on from the back. And from the letters he wrote to her from Vietnam, I know Daddy missed making love to Mama under a tin roof on a rainy night. It rains a lot at the beach.

While she gave me a tour of the house, I thought of all the times as a teenager I'd begged God to send Mama a good man to take care of her. As I walked through her home, admiring the gleaming planters perched in an alcove above the stairwell and the spacious master suite off the dining room, I thought how far she'd come from trailer life. Then I realized that God had answered those long-ago prayers of mine.

No. He hadn't sent Mama a man to take care of her. Instead he allowed her to learn to take care of herself. And with one glance around her home today, it's easy to see that Mama took that lesson to heart.

Mama finds ways to fill her life, tending to flowers in her garden or taking long walks on the beach with her dog, or painting. Sometimes, when Frank or Linda drop in, Mama cooks up a mess of beans and rolls out some biscuits. Daddy always loved Mama's beans. And she is always happy when one of the grandchildren drops by.

Family pictures, framed in glass and silver, litter coffee tables and bedside tables throughout Mama's home. There are photos of Uncle Carl and Uncle Charlie. Of Frank, Linda, and me and our families, and of Grandpa Harve, Granny Ruth, and Aunt Cil. Mama displays pictures of everyone in her house but Daddy. Even though nearly four decades have passed, Shelby Jean Mayes Spears just can't bear a constant talisman of the love she lost.

During my visit to the Wall for the twentieth-anniversary ceremonies, a news reporter stopped me and asked about the picture I was wearing around my neck. So I showed her my father's name, David P. Spears, on the East Panel.

“I was blessed to have two heroes in my family,” I told her: “my father and my mother.”

The reporter wept when I said that. Afterward she sent me a note that said: “I just wanted to say how touched I was (and still am) by your story. It really puts the effects of the Vietnam War into perspective.”

Long before I met Peter, before I laid eyes on that towering statue of Hero Mother in Da Nang, I knew my mother was every bit the hero my father had been.

Mama didn't always handle things with grace. She made her fair share of mistakes and then some. We all did. But for all Mama's faults, for all of mine, I realized that the best decision Daddy ever made was asking Shelby Jean Mayes to marry him and to have his babies.

I suspect Daddy had a premonition about that, too. I figure he knew that no matter what came our way, Mama would never give up the battle. Come hell or high water, she'd hold the line of defense. She would soldier on. And she'd teach each of us to do the same. She
may not have slept on any pillow long enough to fashion a crown of chicken feathers, but I suspect someday God will give her a glistening diamond-and-ruby crown of her own.

Mama's steadfast love for Daddy is a reminder to me that the men who went to Vietnam were some of our nation's finest. They were professional soldiers who served their country honorably. Each one was someone's beloved son, someone's brother, another's faithful husband or friend. And thousands were devoted daddies to an untold number of children.

I am blessed to be the child of such a soldier. I am proud to be the daughter of a Vietnam veteran. And I'm equally proud to be the daughter of Shelby Jean Mayes Spears, my very own Hero Mama.

T
HE
S
HELBY
S
PEARS
“H
ERO
M
AMA
” S
CHOLARSHIP
F
UND
provides financial aid to single moms seeking to obtain a nursing degree at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. Tax-deductible contributions can be made to the “Hero Mama” Scholarship Fund, Columbus State University Foundation, 4225 University Avenue, Columbus, GA 31907–3645. Or visit www.heromama.org

 

S
ONS AND
D
AUGHTERS IN
T
OUCH
is a national organization designed to provide support to the adult children of American servicemen killed or missing in action as a result of the Vietnam War. For more information about SDIT, please call (800) 984–9994 or log on to the website at www.sdit.org

 

T
HE
V
IRTUAL
W
ALL
^®
V
IETNAM
V
ETERANS
M
EMORIAL
contains personal remembrances of letters, photographs, poetry, and citations honoring those women and men named on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. For more information contact The Virtual Wall at www.virtualwall.org or by e-mail at The [email protected]

 

V
IETNAM
V
ETERANS OF
A
MERICA,
I
NC
.
is dedicated exclusively to serving Vietnam-era veterans and their families. VVA relies totally on private contributions, which are tax-deductible to the donor. For more information, contact VVA at 8605 Cameron Street, Suite 400 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910–3710, by phone at (301) 585–4000, or on the web at www.vva.org

During the summer of 1966, I spent a good deal of time in a Tennessee holler at Aunt Cil's. Her house is gone now, but the barn where my cousin Lon used to slop the pigs is still standing. It's weathered quite a bit, just like me. But up around the bend is the church where Aunt Cil used to sing praise songs to the God she loved so well.

I recently returned to that church graveyard. I plucked a handful of wild roses growing beneath the church's stained-glass window and carried those flowers to the spot where Aunt Cil rests. A faded certificate marked her burial spot. At the time of Cil's death, Mama could not afford to buy her beloved aunt a headstone.

The tears of heaven's children fell, soaking the ground that covered Cil's body. Oh, how I loved her body! Round and soft and always eager to comfort worn-out souls. I wanted to curl up beside Cil and feel her warmth one last time.

But the ground has grown cold and Cil has long been dead. I knelt down and muttered a prayer, and thanked Cil for all those afternoons she spent telling me stories.

Then, I drove to a monument company in Rogersville and bought my great-aunt a headstone. A pink marble slab. Cil loved all things pink. On it I had inscribed a favorite quote—Words rise up out of the country—because Cil was the first to tell me the stories of Jesus, of Mama, and of our people.

In 1966, I was too young to realize what precious treasures stories are. But after I had a family of my own, I began to hunger for tales of my dead daddy and my lonesome mama.

In 1996, I began searching for the men who served with Daddy in
Vietnam, and prodding Mama to release the memories she grasped ever so tightly. This story could not have been told without her cooperation. She wasn't always a willing participant, but she was always honest. Thank you, Mama.

The names of two families have been changed in this book–that of my high school boyfriend, who for obvious reasons I didn't want to track down. And the family of the sergeant, who had been my father's best bud and may have contributed to his death, declined to participate in the story.

Mama's honest ways taught me not to rely on my memories alone. Trauma eats at a person's mind, creating gaps. Details are often hard to recall. When mine were in dispute, I turned to family and friends for help. My thanks to Frank Spears, Linda Spears Barnes; Mary Sue Spears; Delmer Floyd; Hugh and Nina and Joel Spears; James Spears; Linda Mayes; Dode and Betty Price; Lynn Wilkes; Karen Mendenhall; Steve Smith; and Pastor Smitty and Betty.

I owe a big hug to the men of Battery B, 2/9th Artillery, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. A special thanks to Captain John Osborne; Doug Johnson; Pablo Gallegos; Gary Smith; Gary Catlett; John Nash; and Andrew Melick. Thank you for the ways in which you continue to honor my father with your stories.

I relied heavily on the expertise of people ohsomuch smarter than me. Joe Galloway, your book served as a compass, pointing me to the place where Daddy served and died. Thanks for your gracious mentorship and big ol' Texas heart. Bob Welch, thanks for clearing the path for me. Doug Bates, thanks for being the first to see the value of this tale and for introducing me to David Kelly, who enabled me to get it down on paper.

Senator Gordon Smith, Pauline Laurent, Patty Lee, and Jeanette Chervony helped me obtain my father's military records; thank you. Jeanette also spent countless unpaid hours maintaining the
Hero Mama
website. Thank you, Jeanette, for all you do on behalf of our fathers. And to all my brothers and sisters at Sons and Daughters in Touch; the
faithful volunteers at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; Diane Carlson Evans; Xuan Nguyen; the Virtual Wall crew; my pals at Vietnam Veterans of America, VietNow, and Run for the Wall; and veterans the world over, thanks for sharing your stories and indulging mine.

To those who blanketed me with prayers, fed me, and gave me shelter, my deepest appreciation: Ed and Connie Henricks; Hunter Mendenhall; Ken and Sherri Callaway; Philip and Karen Clark; Norman and Rhonda Waller. And to my long-suffering beau, Tim, and our brood, Stephan, Ashley, Shelby, and Konnie—you all do me proud every day.

Thanks also to Cathy Fussell, director of the Columbus State University Carson McCullers Center, for inviting me to be the first writer in residence and making me feel right at home while hard at work. Thanks also to the helpful assistance provided by CSU archivist Reagan Grimsley, and those ever-helpful librarians at W. C. Bradley Memorial Library in Columbus, Georgia, and the Kingsport Public Library in Kingsport, Tennessee.

My agent, Carole Bidnick, and my editor, Henry Ferris, understood from the get-go that this story was more than just a personal memoir; it's a reflection of families torn asunder by war. Thank you, Carole and Henry, for gracing this story with your earnest devotion and uncompromising professionalism. You've done Mama and Daddy proud.

I share this story in hopes that all people, but in particular our nation's leaders, will carefully consider how one soldier's tragic death can alter a family's destiny for all time.

It was Daddy and Mama who taught me that bravery isn't the absence of fear but the ability to press on in spite of it. So remember, y'all, be strong and of good courage, always.