Sons and Daughters in Touch

By TAD BARTIMUS

If you don't have a dad, Father's Day comes too often and lasts too long. 

Most of us without our fathers were once lucky enough to have them. We cherish good memories and make peace with the bad ones. We have shelves of photo albums full of their pictures, we live daily lives by the moral code they passed on to us through osmosis. Even if our fathers died before they could see our first-borns, we don't feel so cheated because they watched us graduate, danced at our wedding, got to tell us goodbye.

The sons and daughters of soldiers who died in Vietnam don't have memories of their dads. Dog-eared snapshots, a formal portrait in uniform, some yellowed letters written in fading ink carefully preserved by their mothers are handled like gold, frankincense and myrrh because they are the only tangible remnants of too many good men lost. 

When the soldiers' children ask about the smiling man in the pictures they know most answers will be accompanied by tears. In the 25 years since the Vietnam war ended, they've trained themselves to pose only the most urgent questions – what made my father laugh? Cry? Who was his best friend? What were his dreams? Why did he go to Vietnam? Tell me again – what did he say about me?

Often these children know more about how their fathers died than how they lived. There are telegrams, funeral notices, a carefully folded flag to confirm they were genuine American heroes. But what else were they? 

No matter how hard these children close their eyes and wish for it, the men who gave them their names never quite come into focus. Like a favorite movie star, their idols remain distant figures seen through everybody else's lens. 

About 20,000 Americans now coming up on middle age lost their fathers in the Vietnam War. Several thousand of them are involved in Sons and Daughters in Touch (SDIT), a non-profit self-help group for children and other relatives.

This Father's Day, SDIT supporters will gather at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C., for a "family reunion." The three-day event has the obligatory hospitality suite, Saturday night banquet and discounted hotel and airfare rates. But there also will be a ritualistic washing of The Wall, as though cleansing it with soap and water will help these children draw closer to loved ones whose names are carved on it.

Ari Harrison is going this year because it helps him feel better. Harrison was seven months old when his father, Ellis David Greene, a 1967 West Point graduate, was killed while flying his assault helicopter near Song Be on May 23, 1970. 

"Everything I know about my father is second-hand," said Harrison, who was adopted when he was 11 by his stepfather, Naval Academy graduate and Vietnam veteran Lloyd Harrison. "He was a gymnast, six-foot, three inches tall, dark brown hair. A handsome devil. People tell me I look like him. 

"I have such mixed feelings… part of me feels connected to him – how I act, how I conduct myself around older people. A classmate wrote an article about him after he died in which he was described as '18 going on 45' and I've felt that way most of my life.

"I went through an identity crisis in college…I felt I had a lot to live up to with my father who was gone, and then with my stepfather, who's a wonderful guy and the only father I've ever known. I felt disconnected to my biological father because I have no role model from him. But I know he stood for honesty, courage, integrity. He was a leader. So is my adoptive father. You hate to put somebody on a pedestal but… I felt I had a lot to live up to with my father who is gone, and my stepfather, too."

Harrison attended the first SDIT reunion at The Wall in 1993 "and it was very emotional for me. For the first time in my life I was able to meet other kids who had this empty feeling inside them because of this loss of connection to our fathers. It was amazing to find out they all felt the same way I did."

Cassandra Pettit is not going to this year's SDIT reunion, but may in the future. Now that she has a three-year-old son, named David after her real father, David Edwards Wischemann, she wants to try and sort out long-buried emotions about losing her father. Wischemann and eight men in his squad were killed Oct. 31, 1972, when the helicopter in which they were riding was shot down. His only child was just 16 months old. 

"I have one picture of us together," she said. "I was nine months old, sitting on my daddy's lap, with a big black dog in the background. My grandpa says every time he saw me with my dad I was in his arms… ."

Pettit was adopted by her mother's second husband, Robert Glenn Pettit Sr. , and says she had "the best childhood anybody could ask for." 

"But because I lost my father before I knew him, there will always be a hole in my heart."

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