AJC Article
Dead Marine's letters bring life in Vietnam home to family
By MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constution
Published on: 12/27/07
As a child, Terri Walker peppered her family with questions about the man in the Marine uniform whose photograph hung in the hallway of her grandmother's house. A copy of the photo sat atop a Victrola in the formal living room of her own house.
He was like an apparition. His face haunted her.
"I can't talk about it," Walker's mother, Jean, said in response to the questions.
As she grew older, Walker knew she had an uncle who, at the tender age of 17, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and shortly after went to fight in Vietnam.
She knew his name was Tommy J. Holtzclaw and that, in 1967, he came home in a body bag.
She and her sister Connie Hughes heard that other Marines and soldiers often talked about losing their souls in the jungles of Southeast Asia. They wondered about their uncle's last days.
And then, unexpectedly, their grandmother's death last year opened their eyes to the world occupied by "Tommy J."
Leila Holtzclaw, who could not utter a word about her son, had saved every note he wrote home.
Through Tommy Holtzclaw's letters, which Walker compiled into a recently published book, the sisters mourned a man they never knew and helped heal their family's scars.
Shielded as girls from all that was Vietnam, the two women can now claim an understanding of conflict and personal sacrifice in a time when America is once again at war.
Over four decades, Leila Holtzclaw neatly kept her son's letters, snapshots, high school mementos, Purple Heart and military commendations. She saved the telegram she received from the military informing the family of Tommy's death, the newspaper obituary and the program from the funeral.
She kept it all in cardboard boxes that her younger son, Johnny, took home to sort through after Leila's funeral in September 2006.
The two Holtzclaw boys grew up close, sharing a bedroom and a love for soccer and football. Johnny, 56, looked through the letters his brother wrote home almost every day; remembered reading them when they arrived from Da Nang and Nui Loc Son.
Then he thought he would burn them all. What use was it now, 40 years later, to dredge up memories? Who'd want to read his brother's letters anyway?
Tommy Holtzclaw was not the only casualty that April 21; he had died along with other Marines as his regiment came under enemy rifle fire. The Holtzclaw family buried a host of emotions along with Tommy's remains.
Maybe it was best left undisturbed, Johnny Holtzclaw thought. But at the last minute, he chose not to toss the boxes into the flames.