With no further information available, despite many questions, Daddy saw the Casualty Officers to the door. He thanked them for coming, and closed the door behind them. Daddy slammed the bolt securely into place, as if locks would keep more bad news away.
Mama and Daddy sat quietly in the living room, cloaked in shock. Long minutes passed before I gathered enough courage to slip from under the safety of the warm, soft covers. I moved quietly down the hall to peek around the corner into the living room.
Slumped over in her favorite chair, Mama covered her face with trembling hands as she openly sobbed. Daddy sat in his chair and stared at nothing. Tears ran slowly down his face to drip undisturbed onto his white t-shirt. I’d never seen my Daddy cry before; this frightened me almost as much as Jerry being lost.
I desperately searched for words of comfort as our world unraveled. I wanted to run to my parents, fall at their knees, tell them I loved them, and assure them everything would be okay. Although my parents had never doubted my premonitions before, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I mysteriously felt Jerry was alive. They might become angry as well as disheartened. At sixteen, I wasn’t equipped to handle this situation. I couldn’t move, afraid if I admitted to knowing Jerry was missing, it would make it all too real. I’d eavesdropped on a conversation I wished I’d never heard; one I would never forget. I simply couldn’t bear the pain I saw in that room.
I eased back down the hall into the bathroom, shut the door, and buried my face into a thick towel. I clutched the towel and pressed hard fists tightly against my eyes to stop the tears that tried to spill. I vowed I would never cry in front of Mama and Daddy. I would remain strong for my family because I truly believed Jerry would eventually be found and come home.
January 21, 1968, I would never forget this date. A knock on the door had changed our lives forever. Even when the Army found Jerry, things would never be the same. We now realized the harsh realities of war could reach out and touch anyone, at any time, in any place. As long as he remained in Vietnam, Jerry would never be safe; we needed him to come back home.
The Western Union telegram arrived later the same day. It read similar to the Report of Casualty, but also advised, “In order to protect any information that might be used to your son’s detriment, your cooperation is requested in making public only information concerning his name, rank, service number and date of birth.”
Mama explained to me that this meant we couldn’t tell anyone outside of our immediate family Jerry was missing, or possibly a prisoner. We were to honor an unwritten Code of Silence. I was not to go to school and tell my friends, or my teachers, my brother was MIA in Vietnam. We didn’t talk about Jerry’s situation in front of Cindy. She was too young to understand and might repeat something to the wrong person. Our parents felt it imperative we follow the Army’s orders of silence; Jerry’s very life could be at risk if we refused to comply. The worst time of our lives, when we most needed help from extended family and friends, we were under counsel not to talk about the very subject fundamental to our peace of mind.
When I went to school the next day, I constantly thought about the Army’s order to keep the situation secret for Jerry’s sake. I tried to act normal, as if nothing had happened. Jerry might be missing, but as far as we knew, he was still alive. The U.S. Army and his buddy’s were searching for him. All we could do now was to wait faithfully.
Days, weeks, then months went by. Our house became a somber place. Cindy and I missed the lively conversation and cheerful laughter that once filled our home, especially when we gathered for meals. Mama and Daddy now rarely spoke. “Where’s Jerry?” sat in the middle of the supper table like an ugly centerpiece everyone tried to ignore.
Cindy attempted to disrupt the dismal atmosphere at home with chatter about her second grade activities. She didn’t have any idea what MIA meant, or why everyone was so sad. Mama wanted to protect Cindy, why break her little heart with worry. As our parents withdrew into their own sorrow, we had to figure things out on our own. Without parents who knew how to cope with a painful situation steeped in secrecy, we were all without a prop. We had no one to talk to, no shoulder to cry on, and no one to share in our pain.
Daddy went to the shop as usual to keep his mind occupied with work, which helped him through the long days of waiting for news. At night, when we all watched television together after supper, I could see his dark brown eyes shine with unshed tears. I pretended not to notice, he seemed to prefer it that way.
Mama was left alone most of the week while Cindy and I were at school. Her time alone was spent alternating between hope and despair. We often found Mama crying with Jerry’s picture cradled in her arms. She rocked back and forth, calling out over and over again to the son she might never see again, “Mama loves you, Jerry, Mama loves you.”
Black Cats returning from a mission. Photo courtesy Black Cat Assn.
Chapter Nine
Life Goes On
Daddy was from the flatlands of Washington County, Mama the rolling hills of Yazoo County. Their families had struggled to survive during the Great Depression. Everyone, young and old, worked to put food on the table. Both had joined the ranks to chop and pick cotton as soon as they could walk. They held in common a strong ambition never to return to the cotton patch.
Nothing in life ever came easy to William Stafford Elliott. He was born in a hospital tent when the Mississippi River flooded in 1926, and the family was evacuated downriver. Grandpa George was a riverboat gambler until the steamboats stopped running up and down the Mississippi. He drifted back to the hills of Tennessee and we only saw him a couple of times a year. Daddy’s mother, Grandma Rosie, was very much a part of our lives and loved him very much, but it was his grandmother, Lena, who raised him until she died. Never one to put much stock in material items, his one treasure was her carnival glass pitcher and glasses. Collected one piece at a time as a bonus for each twenty-five pound sack of flour purchased, the thick purple glass decorated with peacocks was priceless to him.
After her death, he was sent to live with other relatives in Greenville, and he earned his keep by picking cotton or odd jobs. Against all obstacles, he managed to complete the seventh grade before taking on a fulltime job. He enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1944 as an apprentice seaman. A few months after enlisting, Uncle Sam called him to active duty aboard the U.S.S. LST 907. The Navy awarded him the American Theater Campaign Ribbon and the World War II Victory Ribbon before his honorable discharge as a Seaman First Class in 1946. He seldom spoke to us about his time in the Navy, and never about the war.
“Bill” Elliott was a big man with a quick smile, a slow temper, and a jackhammer fist. When he visited the local bank, the tellers always smiled when they heard Daddy’s laugh echo throughout the big building. Always sociable, he never let distance or familiarity stop him. Five hundred miles from home, he could strike up a conversation with a local store clerk, a complete stranger, and spend forty-five minutes exchanging banter. He talked about the weather, the price of fuel, or any subject at hand. He was easy to be around, an outgoing nature part of his charm.
Bill Elliott (Daddy) on a family fishing trip, circa early 1950s.
He had an exceptional aptitude for working with anything mechanical, especially vehicles. As far back as I could remember, he owned and operated Bill’s Auto Repair. He specialized in transmission repair, and frequently sold used cars. He could stand by a car or a truck, listen to it run for a few minutes, and accurately determine the problem.
From the age of seven or eight, I spent every Saturday with him at the shop cleaning tools and sweeping floors. We spent a lot of time together and had a special bond, even though we didn’t have a lot of serious conversations. Daddy treated everyone the same. He told us, “You can’t judge a person by the clothes they have on, because you don’t know what they have in their pockets, or in their hearts.” Although he usually didn’t work on credit, he often helped his regular customers when money was tight and th
eir vehicles needed repair.
When he was a young man, Daddy loved to race stockcars. Once during a heat, a violent crash threw him out his car into the middle of the oval track. He looked up to see a pack of cars barreling straight towards him. He gave up racing after that, but he still liked to drive fast. When we were little, Jerry and I loved speeding down the highway with Daddy at the wheel. We urged him on, “Faster, Daddy, go faster, faster!” We weren’t afraid because we thought there was nothing our Daddy couldn’t do. We went to the stock car races every Saturday night during the season, me barely tall enough to climb the bleachers to escape the dust kicked up on the dirt track.
Daddy was a talker, and Mama was a bookworm. Mary Emma Richardson, at the age of thirteen, nursed her mother, Mary Virginia, for many months before she lost her to cancer. Afterwards, Mama went from relative to relative. Her father, Grandpa Lee, didn’t feel like he could raise his youngest daughter properly without a woman in the home, but Mama did okay for herself. A very progressive young woman for her time, she not only competed in beauty contests, she also graduated from Draughons Business College, and landed a good job with the telephone company. An autograph book from her college days indicates she was well-known for her sense of humor and quick wit.
Mama was very intelligent and well read. She enjoyed a variety of books, but she preferred literature and world history. On long car trips, she would recite poetry to entertain us when we got restless. She encouraged us to read, draw, and listen to music. We often talked about things happening in the world that we heard about on the news. She regularly reminded us, “If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.”
Mama was a good homemaker and an exceptional cook. When I was little and she made chicken n’ dumplings, Mama would let me carry the long, thin slices of dough from the table to the chicken pot. I stood on a kitchen chair to drop the dumplings in one at a time. I can still remember Mama in her apron, bent over the deep pot of steaming dumplings, with a long wooden spoon in her hand. She was also a talented seamstress, and made many of our clothes when we were small. She had a lot of fortitude anytime learning was involved, and truly needed patience when she tried to teach Jerry and me to embroider. I liked it well enough, but Jerry got his thread tangled up on the first try, threw it down, and went outside to play ball.
We always had a lot of fun at our house. Our parents taught us it was okay to laugh with others, and occasionally at yourself. Mama loved to laugh. She got a kick out of humorous television programs like The Red Skelton Show or The Beverly Hillbillies. Her bubbling laugh was so infectious we generally enjoyed her merriment as much as we laughed at the comedians.
Ordinarily, when we got home from school Daddy was still at work and Mama was in the kitchen, or busy with her latest project around the house. We ate supper as a family at the kitchen table, and talked about our day. A typical American family was the home life I remembered, a time I would often reflect back on when things got bad. Cindy was too young to have my years of good memories. She was the one truly shortchanged. Our little sister lost so much more than a brother when Jerry disappeared from our lives. Our family plainly didn’t function as it had when Jerry was out of harm’s way.
Pleasant family times seemed to be something from the past. Stricken with grief, and the endless torment of not knowing what happened to Jerry, our parents became strangers to Cindy and me. The laughter dried up. We no longer heard Mama’s lighthearted chuckles. Daddy’s smile no longer made his eyes twinkle. We saw only puffy dark circles under sad brown eyes. I remember days when Daddy didn’t go to his shop at all, his spirit broken. Always a strong, healthy person, it unsettled us to see him haggard and defeated.
When tragedy strikes a family, it either brings them closer together, or wedges them apart. A bleak, dark distance grew between our parents. They became intolerant of one another. Unspoken anger, guilt, and regret quietly filled the static emptiness as we all tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Mama and Daddy began to drink heavily. My parents, who were once a loving couple, drifted away from each other in a cloud of alcohol and despair. I was embarrassed and ashamed of how my parents acted when they drank. I only allowed my two best friends, Rita and Shirley, to come to our house. My home life bothered me, but because they knew my family when we were normal, I didn’t have to try to explain what I could not.
Little by little, things changed. I hated the situation, but I never hated Mama or Daddy. I tried very hard to understand their broken hearts. I loved my folks, but I couldn’t comprehend what was going on in their minds. They would go for months and not drink a drop. Everything would seem okay, we would fall back into our family routine for a while. Suddenly, they would get on a binge that could last for days; fighting with each other like cats and dogs. The irregularity of their drinking sprees made it difficult to adjust. Cindy and I never knew what to expect when we opened the front door. We tried to believe alcohol wouldn’t take our parents away from us during their sober periods, but it always did. This crushed us with disappointment, and inflamed impertinence. At times, I wanted to scream, “Hey, you two, look at us! Look at Cindy. Look at me. We’re still alive! Doesn’t that count for anything? Aren’t we worth living for?” I dared not be so bold and sassy. I told myself it was best to keep it all boxed-up inside my head. I needed to remain strong for the sake of my family, especially my little sister.
The further apart Mama and Daddy grew, the closer Cindy and I became. More and more, I felt like her second mother instead of her big sister. Even though we squabbled, Cindy and I had always been very chummy. With the nine-year age gap between us, my little sister seemed like a life-sized doll to me. When she was just a tiny baby, I couldn’t wait to get home from school to spend time with her. If asleep in her crib, I would wait impatiently for Cindy to wake up, or find some subtle way to disturb her nap. I loved to push her around the neighborhood in her stroller. Jerry spoiled her too, but he had his limits. There was no way he would change a diaper of any kind. I hated to change those stinky diapers too, but I loved my baby sister.
Cindy Ann had always been a happy child with a big, wide smile like Daddy. It made me sad to watch her change. You could see how puzzled she was about Jerry’s situation, even though she learned to ask few questions. Cindy’s world was our little neighborhood. She had no awareness of a place called Vietnam, or a thing called war. If one of her toys disappeared, she expected it to reappear eventually. She probably assumed her “Butter” would show up in the same manner. Her moods turned dark.
Cindy’s smile was no longer quick or easy. I often coaxed laughter out of her by playing chase, or tickling. Our special game never failed to make her roll around on the floor with the giggles, but after Jerry disappeared, she would often tell me she didn’t want to play. A few times Cindy dared to ask, “When is my ‘Butter’ coming home?” She soon realized this question upset Mama and Daddy. They could only answer with, “We don’t know.” She stopped calling Jerry “my Butter.” I worried she would forget their special relationship as time passed. When Mama broke down and wept, Cindy often cried helplessly by her side. Childishly attempting to comfort without truly understanding the sorrow, her baby girl would devotedly pat Mama’s back. Poor Cindy Ann, her precious childhood stolen by uncertainty and grief.
Cindy was our charming little tomboy one minute, a miniature hellion the next. Gradually, she began to have problems at school; the teachers labeled her hyperactive. Distracted, it was hard for her to pay attention in class. She had trouble reading, and wrote some letters backwards. The teachers said this was because she was left-handed. They urged our parents to force Cindy to use her right hand, but Mama wouldn’t hear of it. Her teachers weren’t aware her behavior and emotional state were in great part due to our unstable home environment, which had everything to do with Jerry being MIA. They never knew because our parents loyally obeyed instructions not to talk about the situation, no matter the personal cost to the family.
When I was little, I loved to crawl in bed with
Mama and Daddy. Snuggled up against Daddy’s broad, warm back, I felt safe and secure. I longed to feel that way again. Although our parents tried to convince us that, “life goes on, no matter what” it seemed as though the Mama and Daddy we knew and loved were missing, just like Jerry.
Chapter 10
The Shrine
Mama was such a pretty lady, especially when she was all dressed up and bejeweled. With her naturally wavy dark brown hair styled in layers, lips painted crimson, she was beautiful. Daddy cleaned up nicely, too. He was boldly handsome when he changed his blue mechanic’s uniform for a white shirt and tie. These days, if they did dress for the rare special occasion, even fancy clothes couldn’t hide their pain. When Jerry came home, I didn’t think he would recognize our parents they had physically changed so much. Mama and Daddy were lifeless; the will to go on sucked right out of their bodies.
A situation I thought was intolerable got worse when Jerry’s personal effects arrived. Now, we had those items he last touched. Uniforms, a few civilian clothes, photos of Jerry in training, joking around with Korean soldiers, posing with Vietnamese villagers, a green and white rabbit’s foot, a reel-to-reel tape player, and his stereo. These inanimate objects were all we had of him, all that was left of his time in Vietnam.
Mama had an oak chest custom-built to hold all his military gear, pictures, and letters. Mama had Daddy put the chest in the center of the living room, underneath the windows that faced the street. It loomed there, full of untold stories. A constant reminder of Jerry, the chest had such a presence that I thought of it as “The Shrine.” Mama didn’t allow anyone to open that chest much less touch anything in there. It was locked, and Mama had the only key; she wanted it to be just so when Jerry came back. I didn’t like seeing that chest everyday; it was depressing, but nobody asked how I felt.
Keeping the Promise: The Story of MIA Jerry Elliott, a Family Shattered by His Disappearance, and a Sister's 40-Year Search for the Truth Page 8
