The toll of the Vietnam War on one American family

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	• Hero Mama : A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost in Vietnam--and the Mother Who Held Her Family Together Karen Spears Zacharias, 2005 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mixed Emotions

As a Vietnam Vet with a couple tours in country I have tried to read all sides of the war and this is the first account I have seen from this side or perspective. For that reason it is an outstanding book and a rewarding perspective from what I am sure was a terrible experience. So my hat goes off to Karen for what she has endured and for putting it in words for us. In the end however I really struggled with what it was trying to say and perhaps that is the message that the tragedy of Vietnam is in trying to make sense of it from what appears to be most angles including this one. It is heartfelt certainly but didnt leave me where I thought it might ...

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A Daughter Remembers Her War

If anybody out there has any doubts about reading "Hero Mama" - pay no attention to them. Scroll back up to "add to my cart", and purchase this book NOW! If you have read books about the Vietnam War in the past, be prepared to read about another type of war that America - and even the Army - had no interest in nor even cared that it existed. Karen Spears Zacharias lost her father in Vietnam when she was nine years old. Although unknown to her at the time, her mom faced the difficult task of raising her, her big brother and little sister with very little help from the U.S. Army and an America which could care less about the on-going war and the soldiers who were giving their lives to support a country in their fight to defeat communism.
Being a retired career noncommissioned officer who served two tours with the "Blue Spaders"(1st Bn, 26th Infantry) of the "Big Red One"(1st Infantry Division) and a writer and author, the only problem I have with "Hero Mama" is the fact that it wasn't published many years earlier.
For over thirteen years I have been honored to know and become very close to a young lady who lost her father when she was twelve years old - Patty Lee. Her father - Chan Totty, was a platoon sergeant in my company and was killed in action at a place called Ap Gu. I will never forget that first phone call I received from Patty as she searched for men like me who knew and served with her father.
Patty has been a very valuable member of Sons and Daughters In Touch and aided Karen in her search for her father's service records and men who knew him in Vietnam.
Thankfully, today the Army takes better care of family members who lose loved ones during the time of war - but Karen and Patty's family had their own difficult war to wage almost 40 years ago - and I am so happy that Karen felt the necessity to put her memories into a book so aptly titled - "Hero Mama."

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I Honor My Hero Grandma

Throughout the pages of this book, Karen shares her life with all of us whether we be widows, children, or like myself grandchildren of war. Living a life of unanswered questions and digging for those answers through her own bravery, Karen recounts the cherished nine years of her life she spent with her father as well as the 30 fatherless years that lied ahead beginning on July 24, 1966. She recalls the struggles of childhood and the successes that her mother set out to achieve to raise three children on her own without choice.

Wanting answers myself to questions about a grandfather I never knew, I seized every moment of this book with overwhelming emotion. I had tears of sadness, tears of happiness and continue tears of pride for my own "Hero Grandma" who raised seven of her own children due to the loss of her husband in VN in April 1966.

"Hero Mama" will be a book you will be unable to put down once you open and read that first page. I know that you will have a different view of war after completing such an emotional journey with Karen. I am one of many who am thankful to Karen, for sharing her family's gallant journey of life with all of us. Her family remains in my heart.

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Excellent book

After hearing the author on NPR, a friend suggested I read this book. I doubt I would have ever picked it up on my own- I felt like I'd seen all the Vietnam movies and I was not affected by the war. However,I can honestly say this is one of the best books I have ever read. I have a new perspective on not only Vietnam but how I feel for the soldiers in Iraq now. It's not only about the consequences of war- it's about family, grief, perserverence and forgiveness. It's one of those books you think about for days and wish you had more of it to read.

The toll of the Vietnam War on one American family

I first picked up Karen Spears Zacharias' memoir because her life's story appeared similar to mine. We both lost our fathers in the Vietnam War; she was nine when her daddy fell in my native country and I was ten when I was separated from mine.

I learned much more beyond that connection.

Behind many of the 58,235 names on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, are wives, daughters, and sons who struggled to deal with unresolved losses that linger for many years. For Zacharias, it took nearly forty years to make sense of it all. She pays tribute to her parents and her siblings with this moving memoir. It is also a stark reminder of the toll of war on surviving family members. Its publication amid the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq provides a preview of the difficulties that lay ahead for the families of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.

The cover jacket of Hero Mama contains a nostalgic color family photo of Mama Shelby, older brother Frankie, younger sister Linda and nine-year-old Karen. Her daddy, Army Staff Sergeant David P. Spears, is the sole figure in black and white, smiling but contrasting from the rest of the Spears family. On July 24, 1966, that smile vanished in the Ia Drang Valley a little more than a year after American combat troops landed in Vietnam. In a trailer home tract in Tennessee, Zacharias' mama received the news from a uniformed soldier pulling up in a jeep clutching a telegram bearing the bad news. Zacharias cried and screamed; Frankie punched the trailer with his fists while screaming, "Those Charlies killed my Daddy!" Years later Zacharias wrote of her father's death: "I think that's what losing Daddy did to us. With him gone, we were headless. It was if somebody came into our home with a machete and in one swift slice decapitated our entire family."

Conflicting accounts surrounding Spears' death immediately surfaced; it was reported that he had died from an accident resulting from the explosion of an artillery round from his 105 mm tube. Troubles soon crept into Zacharias' family as her mama, a tenth-grade dropout, fell for other men while her children lacked the family bonding without their father. Teenage problems with drugs, pregnancy, and anger soon followed the Spears children. Miraculously their mama found the strength to return to school and worked as a prison nurse for many years. Zacharias' poignant recollections revealed a turbulent time for her family, pained by the loss of her daddy but persevered through the will of her mama.

After nearly 300 pages, Zacharias accelerated the narrative from the period of 1975 through her visit to Vietnam in 2003. Following a move from a college in Georgia to Oregon, she married and had four children. On the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, she penned her first piece about Vietnam in a letter that was published by People. Ten years later, while in graduate school and writing her first book, she began her journey that would take her back to her daddy's battleground. While in Vietnam, she put together the pieces of her daddy's death through official government letters and conversations with those who served in his unit. She also met Vietnamese from the north and south and those who also lost their fathers in the protracted and divisive war.

But it would be a statue in Da Nang in central Vietnam where Zacharias would find the motivation for the title of Hero Mama. So ends her search for honor, for peace and for the humanity in the greatest loss in her life, resulting in this important and triumphant work of literature, a must read for every American in another time of war.

On a recent trip to Washington, DC, I revisited the Vietnam Wall. On the black granite I found David P. Spears engraved on panel 9E, line 71. I had come to pay my respect to Spears for his service in an honorable cause during a difficult time. I now know of his family through Hero Mama. They went through difficult pain but they moved on; they are true survivors and not victims. Yet they probably figured Staff Sergeant Spears would have expected nothing less.

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