On my arm I wear two bracelets. One is for my father, the other was given to me by my friend Mickey Olmstead. Mickey and I met in 2003 on a trip to Vietnam – a trip to memorialize our fathers. The difference between Mickey and me is my father came home. Dad’s buried at Andrew Johnson’s National Cemetery in Greeneville. His name – Staff Sgt. David Spears-- is etched on panel 9E of the Vietnam Memorial Wall and on the wall at the War Plaza here in Nashville.

Mickey’s father’s name is etched in the Vietnam Memorial Wall, too. Commander Stanley Olmstead, a Navy pilot, was shot down on Oct. 17, 1965 just north of Hanoi, along with his radar intercept officer, Porter Halyburton. Halyburton ejected and survived the crash, but was then taken hostage and spent 8 years as a POW. The fate of Mickey’s father remains unknown. Cmdr. Stanley Olmstead is one of the 1,800 plus Vietnam veterans determined to be MIA.

Today, however, I want to talk to you about a different sort of POW/MIA issue. Several years ago, during a nationally broadcast live radio show, a caller confronted me about my father’s death.

“Be glad your father died,” the caller said. “You’re the lucky one. My father came home from Vietnam an angry and bitter man. He was abusive to my mom, my sister and me. He couldn’t tolerate loud noises or sudden movements – the very things that make a child a child. Living with him was like walking on glass – you never knew when it was going to break and hurt you. When the injuries he sustained in Vietnam finally took his life 10 years ago, we were all relieved.”

As the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran killed in action, I was keenly aware of the hostilities directed toward soldiers and their families during that very unpopular war. I was 9 years old when my father was killed -- I was a sophomore in college when the war ended. I witnessed the wrath of an ungrateful nation. I’d heard time and time again what a waste my father’s death had been.

But never in all that time had anyone told me that I was lucky that my father died in Vietnam. And this by a young man whose father who had come home.

At the time I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. But that was before I met Sgt. Gordon Wofford of Crossville. Gordon has given me permission to share his story today.

I first met Gordon when he came to a book signing in Johnson City. Then again, when he showed up at one here in Nashville. And another one in Nashville. And one in Ellijay, Georgia. If I was signing books anywhere within a 500 mile radius of Crossville, Gordon was there. I called him my stalker.

Gordon explained that he was a Vietnam Veteran who had been severely wounded in May, 1970 when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the face, blowing off his lower jaw. .

Gordon might not have survived  if not for Doc Ron Krebsbach. Doc reached out and yanked Gordon to safety, but then he was struck by a sniper’s bullet and killed. Krebsbach left behind a young wife, who was 8-months pregnant.

Gordon spent the next 19-months at Walter Reed, where he relearned all the things his parents taught him as a young boy – how to talk, how to chew, how to swallow, how to feed himself, and how to laugh again.

It was that last lesson that was the hardest for him.

Gordon went to war a carefree young man. Handsome. Determined. Strong of will and of character. If he was anything, he was sure of himself.

Vietnam stripped Gordon of all that was familiar to him. He didn’t recognize himself anymore. Not when he looked in the mirror. Or when he looked inward at his heart. In a sense, Gordon returned home a prisoner of war. The young man who had gone to war was now missing in action. Gordon told me that for the next twenty years, he had a death wish.

What he had was survivor’s guilt.

He could not understand why he had lived and the medic who pulled him to safety died. So in order to fix that inequality, Gordon acted out in self-destructive ways. He drank too much. He drove too fast. And the thing I know Gordon regrets to this day is that he acted hateful to the people he loved most – his wife and kids.

All of this was Gordon’s way of punishing himself for surviving the battle that took Doc’s life.

A couple of years ago, the medic who treated my father in the field sent me an email. “I only have one question for you,” he said. “Why did I live when your father didn’t?”

I thought about his question for a long time before I finally wrote back. “I can’t tell you why you lived and my father didn’t,” I said. “But I know this one thing – my father would not want you to waste one minute of this life beating yourself up over that. He’d want you to enjoy every minute of life that God gives to you.”

That’s the same message I gave to Gordon when he told me that Doc’s daughter Angela had written to him, saying she wanted to meet him.

The idea of meeting the daughter that Doc himself never got to meet scared Gordon. He expected that Angela wanted to meet him for one purpose – to hold him accountable for her father’s death.

I reassured Gordon that was probably the last thing on Angela’s mind. I had spent eight years trying to find the men who served with my father. I wanted to find them so they could help me know my dad better. Through the telling of their stories, I would be able to hear my father’s stories, the ones he might tell, had he lived.

I didn’t know Angela, then, but I knew that what she wanted from Gordon was a way to connect with her own dad. But in order for Gordon to do that, the man who had spent 36 years missing in action would have to make an appearance. He would have to relive the horrors of that fateful day, and reclaim the soul of the young man he had once been, the young man who got lost in the chaos of war, and its aftermath.

In May, 2006, Angela and her mother Deb traveled from their home in Minnesota to Crossville to meet with Gordon and his wife Pam.

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that there is a time for everything – a time for war, a time for peace. A time for weeping, a time for rejoicing. Meeting Doc’s family was Gordon’s Hallelujah day. His resurrection morning.

“There has been a tremendous amount of guilt lifted,” Gordon said later. “I feel like I can talk to them now about anything. We are bonded like best friends, family. I want to do all I can for them and I want to be there for them — whatever they need.”

Gordon took other steps to reclaim the man he had been. He turned to the Veterans Hospital for help. He got involved with other Vietnam veterans. He joined this chapter of Rolling Thunder. He became a Wall volunteer. He took his therapy dog, A.J., to the Soldiers Home and to the VA Hospital.

I went with him and A.J. on one of those trips. It was remarkable to see how many smiles AJ and Gordon brought to the weak of mind and frail in body. It was, Gordon said, his way of ministering to others.

For the past couple of years, Gordon and I have spoken nearly once a day. We talked a lot about how the war in Vietnam changed the face of this nation.  In nearly every call, Gordon expressed regret for  all those years he spent wishing he were dead. All the years he spent trying to self-destruct. All the years he spent pushing his loved ones away. All the years he wasted, feeling guilty over a war that took away the only thing he knew for sure – the man in the mirror.

Gordon had finally begun to recapture that man when he was felled in May of this year by what doctors thought was a stroke. It turned out to be a brain bleed, brought on by a cancerous tumor.

Thanks to the prayers of many of you, Gordon’s recovery has been nothing short of miraculous. Doctors have been gob-smacked by his progress.

The cancer isn’t gone. Gordon knows that, short of the healing hand of God, he’s in yet another very dangerous battle. He had surgery just this week to remove more cancer. He hopes to survive long enough to make it to the events surrounding the 25th Anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in DC.

Gordon has told me numerous times that he thinks God spared him so that he could meet me, so that he could meet Angela, and answer her questions about her dad. I only know that I’m thankful that Gordon Wofford is no longer missing in action. He is no longer held hostage by survivor’s guilt.

He is a man set free, in the truest sense.

Back to the caller who chastised me on national radio. He was right, of course, I am one of the lucky ones. My father came home. Mickey Olmstead is still waiting for his dad. What about your family? Are they still waiting for the man they love to show up?

I don’t know your story. I only know if you went to Vietnam and served in a battle zone, you came home a different person. If you’re unable to recognize the man in the mirror, if your truest self is missing in action, or if you are being held hostage by survivor’s guilt, I urge you to please get help. Go to your local VA. Join a Veterans organization. Learn the warning signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Type II Diabetes, and the side affects of Agent Orange.

And, please, tell your story and that of buddies so that your children and your grandchildren will understand that a soldier’s death is never a waste – it’s a sacrifice. One that should never be taken for granted by an ungrateful nation or politicized for personal gain.

I recall with aching clarity the trip our family made from the funeral home in Rogersville to the cemetery in Greeneville on a hot August day in 1966. It was a grueling. I think of that ride every time I read one of Bulldog’s reports about the escorts and honor you provide for yet another of Tennessee’s fallen. I wish there had been that kind of support for families like ours back in 1966.

As the daughter of a Tennessee soldier killed in action, I am thankful for each one of you. I appreciate the sacrifices you have made and continue to make. Thank you for the work you do on behalf of the young men and women returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks for being there to provide them with the Welcome Home that for so many years, too many years, you longed to hear.

I’m glad you made it back. That you had opportunity to raise your family, to love your wife, and to honor the fallen by living your life honorably, to the fullest. Welcome home.

Copyright, Sept. 2007. Karen Zacharias. Reprinted with permission only.