Excerpt: 'Hero Mama'
Jan. 26, 2005 — -- In the book, "Hero Mama: A Daughter Remembers the Father She Lost in Vietnam -- and the Mother Who Held Her Family Together," Karen Spears Zacharias shares her autobiographical account of growing up quickly after learning her father was killed in Vietnam when she was 9 years old. Though her father was a war hero, Zacharias calls her mother a hero as well, for holding the family together during a painful period of loss and financial struggle in the South.
Read an excerpt from "Hero Mama" below.
(If you want to attend a presentation of "Hero Mama" tonight, followed by a conversation with Bob Kerrey, Joe Galloway, and Karen Spears Zacharias at the New School University in New York City, call 212-207-6965.. Location: 66 W. 12th Street).
The Man in the Jeep
At first I never even noticed the jeep, what with trying to tie up the bulldog pup. Grandpa Harve was sitting in a mesh lawn chair nearby, his dead arm slung down between his legs. His good hand flicked a cigarette stub.
"Karen, you hold her," Mama instructed over my shoulder. "Frankie, tie that in a double knot." Daddy's best buddy, Dale Fearnow, had given us a prize bulldog as a gift that day. We were all gathered outside the trailer house trying to figure out where to keep such a creature in a yard that had no grass or fence.
We hadn't lived at Slaughters Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tennessee, very long. It was just a dirt hill with six trailers slapped upside it. One was ours, and one belonged to Uncle Woody, Mama's oldest brother. I'm sure given the situation Mama would have rather not lived in any place named Slaughters.
Folks often laugh when I tell them I grew up a trailer park victim. But when I drive through places like Slaughters, like Lake Forest or Crystal Valley, or any of the other trailer courts I once called home, I ache for the children who live there. And for the circumstances that led their mamas and daddies to make homes between cinder block foundations and dirt yards.
This was late July 1966. Just like any Southern summer, the days steamed and the nights stewed. I found myself missing the ocean breezes of Oahu, where we had last lived with Daddy. We'd left the island just a month before, shortly after I finished third grade.We had family in Rogersville,where both my parents had grown up.
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