A Letter to the Grieving

After her own father died in Vietnam, writer Karen Spears Zacharias learned what it was like to be a survivor of war. Zacharias detailed her own experience in a new family memoir, "Hero Mama: A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost in Vietnam and the Mother Who Held the Family Together" (William Morrow Co.). She has also taken on a freelance counseling effort, reaching out to the children of today's fallen servicemen and women with sympathetic letters, late-night phone calls and quiet visits to their homes. They see her as someone who truly understands--just another kid who lost her father in a faraway war. At NEWSWEEK's request, Zacharias has written them an open letter.

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.