Post by ElrosTarMinitarsus on Mar 14, 2005 15:11:32 GMT -5
part 1
She lost her own father in Vietnam. Now, Karen Zacharias wants to help children dealing with that pain today.
Dear Sons & Daughters of Today’s Fallen:
I read your names: Zane, Tegan, Kadence, Brandon, and Esetavave. And the names of your surviving parents: Sally, Andrea, Linda, Ron, and Latisha.
Then I figure your age, to see if you are yet old enough to remember the parent you lost to war. Or if you are too young to have any memories, like so many of my friends who lost their fathers in the Vietnam War.
I was 9, old enough to have lots of good memories. Such as the way Daddy gently tossed the baseball across home plate so my older brother Frankie could swing for a base hit. Or the time he brought us kids silky soft rabbits for Easter and laughed off Mama’s protestations that our yard would soon be littered with critters. After supper I would sit on Daddy’s lap and rub the palm of my hands across the coarse stubble on his face. It’s in the quiet after supper that I recall my father best. I miss sitting on the front porch and drinking a cup of coffee, reminiscing with him about our family’s growing-up years.
We got word of Daddy’s death on a sun-scorched day in July 1966. We three kids-Frankie, 12, me, and Linda, 7-gathered around Mama, as she bent over the backend of the trailer tending to a bulldog pup.
Grandpa Harve, Mama’s stroke-disabled father, sat nearby in a lawn chair. A white-woven hat and green-lensed sunglasses shielded his eyes.
I don’t know if he was watching us or the military jeep headed up the entrance to Slaughters’ Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tenn.
She lost her own father in Vietnam. Now, Karen Zacharias wants to help children dealing with that pain today.
Dear Sons & Daughters of Today’s Fallen:
I read your names: Zane, Tegan, Kadence, Brandon, and Esetavave. And the names of your surviving parents: Sally, Andrea, Linda, Ron, and Latisha.
Then I figure your age, to see if you are yet old enough to remember the parent you lost to war. Or if you are too young to have any memories, like so many of my friends who lost their fathers in the Vietnam War.
I was 9, old enough to have lots of good memories. Such as the way Daddy gently tossed the baseball across home plate so my older brother Frankie could swing for a base hit. Or the time he brought us kids silky soft rabbits for Easter and laughed off Mama’s protestations that our yard would soon be littered with critters. After supper I would sit on Daddy’s lap and rub the palm of my hands across the coarse stubble on his face. It’s in the quiet after supper that I recall my father best. I miss sitting on the front porch and drinking a cup of coffee, reminiscing with him about our family’s growing-up years.
We got word of Daddy’s death on a sun-scorched day in July 1966. We three kids-Frankie, 12, me, and Linda, 7-gathered around Mama, as she bent over the backend of the trailer tending to a bulldog pup.
Grandpa Harve, Mama’s stroke-disabled father, sat nearby in a lawn chair. A white-woven hat and green-lensed sunglasses shielded his eyes.
I don’t know if he was watching us or the military jeep headed up the entrance to Slaughters’ Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tenn.