Catherine Watson: Calling the dead
Catherine Watson, Special to the Star Tribune
"Accident victims" families are worse -- they're not prepared. Military families are calmer. They're half-expecting it."
The speaker was a veteran journalist, giving advice to me and a few other young reporters nearly 40 years ago, as we worked on a gruesome task, in another ugly war. Today, every time I read a headline about American deaths in Iraq, I remember those words. I've been remembering them a lot lately.
We were night-siders on the old Minneapolis Tribune, working shifts that started in late afternoon and went on till 10 or 12 at night. All of us were women. On the surface, that seemed a triumph of feminism -- lots of women entering what had traditionally been a male profession.
The real reason had to do with the Vietnam War. Women couldn't be drafted, so hiring us meant that the newspaper -- and plenty of other U.S. businesses -- didn't have to keep a job open for a guy who'd been called to serve.
Because we were cub reporters, we did the grunt work, which included making phone calls to sheriff's offices about tornado damage, snow conditions, the size of hailstones in distant counties and, inevitably, fatal traffic accidents, drownings and murders.
Sometime in late 1966, as the numbers of dead and missing began to steepen in Vietnam, our city editor, Stu Baird, called us together and announced a new assignment.
Until the war was over, Baird said, the Tribune would publish a small profile of each soldier lost from our region. "These are young men dead before their time," he said. "We are not going to let them go in silence."
It was our job to gather the information. Every day, the Department of Defense (DOD) prepared a list of of those killed in action or identified as missing in action, and the Associated Press sent that list to daily papers across the country.
Along with hundreds of other stories, the list was churned out of a teletype machine. You can still hear their clanking in the background of old movies about this business -- it used to be the dominant sound of the newsroom.
Copy aides ripped the incoming stories off the teletypes and carried them to the editors, who decided which ones would get into the next morning's paper. Once we received the daily list from the DOD, we began what we referred to as "calling the Vietnam dead."
The list gave only the basics: name, rank and hometown. If the name was unusual and the town small, you could often get the right family by phoning directory assistance. In other cases, or when there were a lot of, say, Andersons or Swensons to choose from, we called the sheriff's office, the police or even the local paper and asked which family this man belonged to. Somebody always knew. Then we called the family.
We quickly developed a standard introduction: Apologize for disturbing them at this time, say we are sorry for their loss, explain that the paper wanted to honor their soldier, ask if they would help us with information. They always said yes.
"Military families are calmer ... " I don't remember which old reporter told me that, but it was true. Only "calm" wasn't quite the right word. "Numb" was more like it. Numb and resigned.
I remember talking to 18-year-old widows, to young women about to have their first child, to parents, to siblings, sometimes a fiancée, grandparents, aunts, uncles. They seldom became emotional on the phone.
The profiles were just a paragraph or two -- there were so many that the paper didn't have room for anything longer -- and that meant that the interviews were mercifully brief. Where was your husband/son/father/brother when you last heard from him? How long had your husband/son/father/brother been in Vietnam? Do you have a recent photo of your husband/son/father/brother?
The names of the dead and missing weren't supposed to be released to the press until the DOD had notified the next of kin. But the military is very big, and sometimes it makes mistakes.
One night, when another reporter was doing the calling, she reached a family that hadn't been notified yet. It was what we all dreaded, and I remember being grateful that it hadn't been me whose call had broken the awful news.
My turn came soon enough, in a different way, and it was my fault, not the DOD's. It still makes my skin crawl and my stomach tighten.
The AP list was difficult to read -- single-spaced, typed in fuzzy capitals on rough paper. It had two parts, barely separated: KILLED IN ACTION and MISSING IN ACTION. I had not known how much hope lay hidden in the second heading, until a night when I misread the list and got the wrong line.
"This is the Minneapolis Tribune," I said to one of those strangely calm widows. "The Associated Press has informed us that your husband is missing in action and ..."
The young woman gasped. "Missing!" she said. "MISSING! They told me he was dead!"
I knew instantly what had happened and felt shivery and sick. "No, no!" I said. "They told you the truth! I read it wrong! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
She did not break down or get angry. She took a deep breath, the numb tone came back into her voice, and she answered all the usual questions.
I do not remember crying about it then, but it has made me cry many times since, including now. Maybe especially now, when the same phone calls are being made to another generation of grieving families, the same advice being given to young reporters about how to handle them and the same stories written about what they say.
Each time I read one, I remember that young widow, and I am sorry all over again -- more than a thousand times sorry, so far, and counting.
© 2004 Star Tribune