TheBanyanTree: DONNY YOUNG

[Sharon Mack]

DONNY YOUNG

I don't remember a lot about Donny.  I was fourteen and a freshman in high school; he was a senior.  I was new to the school and had very few female friends.  New girls are always a threat to those already established in their cliques.  The males on the other hand, were delighted to befriend me.  There was Ronny, Donny, Steve and another new girl, Ginny.  The five of us were always together my freshman year.  All were seniors but Steve and I.  It was sad when they graduated.  They were sorely missed.

Ginny moved to California with her family.  Ronny stayed in town and got a job in construction.  Steve and I entered our sophomore year and Donny went to war, specifically to Vietnam.  We all wrote him.  He sent a few pictures.  I had never met his family before but somehow with him being away we gravitated to his home and his mother.  We sat around the kitchen table in their small inadequate house with Mom and the other siblings and talked about Donny.  When I think back, it seems like we were already preparing for his inevitable death.  Vietnam was frightening.  At the time we didn't know a whole lot about it; neither the war nor the place.  Only that it was in Asia and it was hot and had treacherous jungles.  This we got mostly from Donny's letters.

Donny had barely finished his first tour when he got hit.  He walked over a land mine.  No one in his small company survived.  He came home in a closed casket with the American flag draped over it.  The casket remained closed.  There was nothing to view.

My reaction was numbness.  A dull ache that I still can't describe.  My mind couldn't absorb it.  I don't think it ever has even though I have since experienced other deaths.  I think the difference was that he was one of ours.  He was our pal, our buddy, our friend, our neighbor, our schoolmate.  He made us laugh.  We had danced together.  We went to football games together.  We talked and talked and talked together.  We wrote letters back and forth.  He was supposed to come back and rejoin OUR RANKS!

But instead he died.

Two years ago I went to Washington D.C. with several friends. It was an educational trip put on by the college that I work for.  I visited the wall.  I drove my friends crazy*.I HAD to find Donny's name.  
I did.  

I have a photo now of me standing at that wall touching his name.  The photo is so clear you can read it and now, as I write this tribute, I am crying for the loss of this young man who fought for our country forty-one years after his death.  The tears flow easily now.  They didn't then.