Then, in February 1987, Brenda lost her securities-marketing job in Oakland, Calif.—and at last decided to confront her tragedy squarely as a means of getting on with her life. The Pentagon had told her only that Eddie had died "while under hostile mortar attack." Determined to find out all the details, she embarked on a four-year odyssey that would take her from tiny villages in Vietnam to the bureaucratic maze of the Pentagon. And what started as a mission of self-help became a crusade in the name of her husband, which ended last month in Washington, D.C., with Brenda accepting a posthumous Silver Star for him.
Her memories of Eddie were all the more vivid for being so short-lived. They met over Labor Day weekend in 1962. Eddie, then 19, had dived into a pool near Kingsport, Tenn., where she was a lifeguard, and hadn't come up for air. When Brenda, who was then 16, went in after him, she discovered that he'd been faking, just so he could meet her. They married a year later when Eddie, a senior, was already a star pole vaulter at East Tennessee State and Brenda was a freshman. An ROTC cadet, Eddie joined the Army, where he did Airborne and Ranger training before shipping out for Vietnam in July 1967, leaving behind Brenda and their infant son, James Jr. Daughter Jamie was on the way. Seven months later Eddie was killed in the Mekong Delta during the Tet Offensive.
Nineteen years later, trying to reconstruct the events leading up to his death seemed a daunting task. For one thing, both James Jr. and Jamie, caught off guard, were not keen on the idea. But when Brenda announced that she was going to Vietnam to visit the spot where Eddie had been killed. James joined her. For two weeks they traveled the Vietnamese countryside, although officials refused to allow her to visit her husband's last post, an old French colonial stronghold known as Fort Courage. As it happened, though, Brenda's tour had received press attention back in the United States. When she returned home to California, members of Eddie's unit began calling, and for the first time she learned what happened the night he died.
North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops had been ferociously shelling Eddie's 110-man company at Fort Courage, they said. Outnumbered 10 to 1, he had called for reinforcements, only to be told that none were available. So he climbed to the top of the fortress to direct his men's return fire. On his second trip up to the exposed rampart, a mortar shell exploded, killing Eddie and three lieutenants. With the coordinates he had passed along, though, his men were able to knock out the enemy mortars and repel the attack. Convinced that Eddie was a hero, Brenda was determined to see his valor recognized. "My husband was not a man who sought medals," says Brenda. "He never would have pursued this himself."
She first approached Eddie's commanding officer, Col. Anthony DeLuca. Now retired and living in Villanova, Pa., DeLuca acknowledged that in the heat of the Tet Offensive he had overlooked Eddie's bravery and should have recommended him for a Silver Star. So apologetic was DeLuca that he even offered to give Brenda his own Silver Star. Backed by DeLuca's testimony and that of four witnesses, Brenda submitted an application to the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records in July 1988. The case sat in bureaucratic limbo for two years. Frustrated by the Army's inertia, Brenda took to the streets of the Bay Area, circulating a petition and telling her story.
The pressure tactics worked—up to a point. In November 1990 the board voted to award Eddie a Bronze Star. But that wasn't good enough for Brenda. She demanded to speak with the man in charge of the board, William Clark, the son of World War II legend Gen. Mark Clark and himself a highly decorated veteran of Korea. Initially, Clark was skeptical of Reed. "She can come on so strong," he says, "but really, the more I got to know her, the more impressed I became." Though hesitant to overrule the board, which on a second vote had again turned down Reed for the Silver Star, Clark gradually began to side with Brenda. "I went through every single word of the transcript and back over all the documents," he says. "As I tried to emotionally visualize what actually happened that day, I became convinced that what he had done was far beyond what normal duty would call for."
In February, Clark unilaterally awarded Captain Reed a Silver Star. For the Reeds—James Jr. is now 26 and hopes to become an urban planner, and Jamie, 23, is a psychiatric researcher at a veterans hospital—the experience provided a kind of redemption. "I got to meet some of the men who knew my dad," says Jamie. "Just hearing the admiration they had gave me a real sense of pride." To Brenda, who works as a motivational speaker, the ceremony represented a final healing for a family ripped apart by war. "Eddie's children now have a memory that will sustain them through both good and challenging times," she says. "He left them a legacy of courage. I've left them a legacy of commitment."
BILL HEWITT
LUCHINA FISHER in Washington, D.C.
- Contributors:
- Luchina Fisher.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
