My brother, Gary, was drafted into the American war in Viet Nam. Before he returned home, he was diagnosed with what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He took his own life ten years later. In my attempts to understand the mystery behind his life and death, I contacted some of his wartime friends and traveled to Vietnam where I used his photographs and letters to serve as my guides. Photography’s unique “claim to reality” allows me the ability to visually express my meditations on loss and to share my story.
In 1967 my brother, Gary, was drafted into the US Army during the Vietnam War. Because our parents were ill and Gary was our caretaker, I was sent to live with relatives. On November 4th, my brother arrived in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. I rarely saw my brother again until I was grown.
Gary wrote many letters home while he was stationed in Vietnam. Pictures arrived. Although in his letters he spoke of his living quarters and described the helicopters he piloted into the front lines, he rarely discussed the dangers. Discharged from the army in December of 1969 with a “service connected nervous disorderâ€, he came to know his problem as “Post Traumatic Stress Disorderâ€. My pre-war brother, a normal and well-adjusted person had become, according to the US Veteran’s Administration, 50% disabled. He took his own life ten years later.
Twenty-five years after his death, I discovered among his belongings, a memo pad that revealed the names and addresses of his wartime friends, some of whom, with diligence, I have managed to contact – 35 years after the war.
Through the remembrances of his wartime friends and through my own journeys to Vietnam in 2007 and 2008, I retraced Gary’s “footsteps†using his letters and photographs as guides. I continue to make discoveries about wartime in Vietnam as experienced by its veterans. The visual record of those experiences continues to unfold.