My Father; Then My Sister

This memoir is about the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

It was 1969, and I sang and twirled and imagined my dad sitting in the green, oversized wicker chair in my grandparents’ kitchen listening to a tape recording of Judy Collins. “My father always promised us that we would live in France.” The song, “My Father,” kept my dad, who was serving in Vietnam, nearby. “I’d sail my memories of home, like boats across the Seine.” I was in the second and third grades and couldn’t find Cu Chi, Vietnam, on a map and wasn’t aware that Dad was in danger. I was aware that he was absent for a very, very long time.

Chief Warrant Officer Fedore’s scratchy voice would emanate from an RCA tape recorder telling his four children to be good for Mum, Grandma, and Grampy and describing a few of his experiences. What can a father say to his children, under the age of ten, crowded around an RCA speaker? No matter the age, is it possible to talk about war with anyone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand? Dad’s recordings often included Joan Baez and Judy Collins songs; I suppose preferring music over spoken words.

In addition to occasional recordings of his voice and music, we received a few photos. An image of my dad sitting next to a swimming pool wearing his familiar black and red checkered swim trunks and a forced smile was what he wanted us to see. In jest, he inscribed, “War is hell” in the white border trying to imply that he’d been lounging next to a pool regularly. His hollow cheeks and dark circles under his eyes belied his jaunty message but his children didn't recognize his exhaustion.

As adults, we’d learned that he’d foregone his two-week furlough in the hopes that he’d be able to return to the U.S. in time for Christmas. He, instead, arrived on U.S. soil on January 11, 1970.

A career military man, he was fortunate to have served in communications and intelligence rather than artillery. At least in communications, he was often fortressed in a bunker beneath a plate of steel, sandbags, oil vats filled with sand, and layers of corrugated iron. Despite this protection, though, one of his black and white photos depicted him with a group of gawking troops below a gaping crevice where a mortar annihilated radio equipment instead of humans. His children didn’t see this photo until adulthood.

Many years after returning from Vietnam, Dad told a story about standing in a bunkhouse when a grenade was launched inside. He dropped to the floor, drew his elbows near his ears, clasped his hands over the back of his head, and prayed, “Not now, Lord. Not like this.”

The grenade didn’t explode.

He attributed his surviving those thirteen months in Vietnam to fervent prayer––both his and ours. I’d like to believe that God listens especially to the prayers of children, though many children’s prayers weren’t answered in 1969.

I don’t know why our family had been so lucky, and, in 2006, we tempted death again. My sister, Karen, skirted the perils of war, in Iraq, as an Air Force Medical Reservist, administering to the wounded for five months. And honoring and sending home the dead.

One day, during Karen’s deployment, I sat at our family kitchen table and asked Mum, “How did you cope with only tape recordings and letters from Dad?” Apparently, the correspondence took weeks to arrive.

With her hands wrapped around her teacup and her lips hinting a smile, Mum said, “Your dad wrote every day.”

I suppose raising four children was a temporary distraction. The five of us shared one room at my paternal grandparents’ house, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Bunk beds nestled in a corner, a single bed sat adjacent, and a double bed was set against the opposite wall in which my brothers and I took turns sleeping with our mom. Maybe lack of sleep kept Mum in a stupor sparing her from conscious thought about whether her husband would survive.

At the kitchen table, sipping tea, Mum said that she enjoyed experiencing new places and the opportunity to pick up some of the languages of countries. Being a military wife had its benefits. My dad’s tour in Vietnam, though, didn’t proffer these worldly advantages.

“When your dad deployed, I thought, ‘How dare he go off and leave me with four children.’” She puffed out a laugh. “I even resented that he was devout Catholic and that he left me with four children.” Mum admitted she was angry with her husband for leaving, while accepting that he had to adhere to his duty. There was no other option.

“I felt fear, also. It intensified the closer to the date that Dad was set to return home. You would hear about these people who’d get killed with just a few days left on their tour. I had been through single parenting during the year Dad was gone but didn’t want that for the remainder of my life.” She set her teacup in its saucer. “Anger springs forth from the fear. It’s a coping mechanism.”

During Karen’s deployment, the primary root of my anger was fear as well. I didn’t want to endure Karen’s Iraq stint. I knew it was selfish of me to feel this way. It was selfish toward my sister because this was what she wanted. It was selfish toward other military families to expect them to sacrifice their sisters over mine.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, all of us––my siblings, Mum, and I––were aware that we had a duty to Dad, to his honor, and to the country. Half my childhood was spent living on a military base with Reveille calling out to its inhabitants, reminding us of our patriotic role. It never occurred to me to question it.

 On some days during Karen’s 2006 deployment, I felt the same obligation to her commitment to serve her country. Other days, when I imagined a world without my sister, I just wanted my duty to be done.