The Chief's Family

I thought I was prepared to learn about what happened to Chief Tozer's family. I was wrong.

I had spoken with Janet Tozer Rasmussen on the phone and recognized her voice when she met me at the door of the café. Her sister, Donna, was inside waiting on tables and greeted us as we came in. On the wall, to the left of the door, was a framed photo of their father, Eldon W. Tozer; and below it, was a description of his military service with a special welcome to veterans who come to the restaurant. We sat down to talk. It was time for me to more fully explain my connection to their father.

"There were others who knew him better than I did," I said. "Your father was a Chief Petty Officer, and was revered by those who knew him. Because he was an enlisted man and had risen through the ranks, he had a special relationship with the boat crews, most of whom were younger and of lower rank. I would describe him as quiet, competent and effective. His job was the same as mine—a patrol officer on boats called PBR's (Patrol Boat River). In the Navy, making Chief, as a non-commissioned officer, was a badge of honor. I called him `Chief'; the men did, too. To us, he was Chief Tozer. He had earned his stripes.

"We got to know each other by working together on patrols, especially in our operations along the Cambodian border where we would operate for several days at a time from a remote base camp on the Vinh Te Canal. There was a strong camaraderie. Back at our main supply base on the Mekong River, we lived a more typical Navy life with separate berthing and messing facilities for officers, chiefs, and enlisted men. But out on patrol, we were all together, dependent upon each other and close to each other. Rank meant very little in those circumstances."

It was in that setting that I had gotten to know and appreciate their father, Chief Eldon Tozer.

It wasn't long before the sisters began to talk about their own memories of their father. "I was nine and Donna was seven when he was killed," Janet explained, "and so I remember more than the younger kids. My brother, David, Donna's twin, was also seven and my sister, Gwen, was only four. I remember my Dad as a quiet person but one who could still draw a crowd. I still recall his love for fishing. When we lived in Massachusetts, he'd go fishing with my uncles or some friends, and I remember him coming back with lots of salmon. Those were good times!"

But our conversation soon turned to other memories which were not as good. Chief Tozer had gone home on emergency leave from Vietnam in September, 1969 because his wife had been killed in an automobile accident in San Diego. "The night that happened," Janet explained, "we were being taken care of by a baby sitter, and my Mom didn't come home. When my Mom was killed, I was told that they initially had difficulty identifying her body. The babysitter hadn't heard anything and didn't know what to do, so she called the police. The police came and took us to what must have been some kind of a juvenile detention facility. I was scared to death. I didn't know why we were there. Everybody kept asking, `Who's your Dad, who's your Dad?' I remember being in a little office and being all upset because my brother and sisters had been taken and put in a different part of the facility. Donna says that the only thing she remembers about the experience is being on the other side of a chain link fence from me, and we were crying as we held hands through the fence.

"We were there for at least three or four days," she continued, "and I didn't know much of anything until my Dad came walking in, in his uniform. He came in with my Uncle Bill and my Uncle Jerry. I'll never forget that moment. We just went running for him yelling, `Dad, Dad!'

"I still didn't know that my mother had died. My Dad got us out of that place and took us back home where other family members were gathered. My Aunt Ruth and Aunt Frances were there, along with Uncle Bill and Uncle Jerry, but my Mom wasn't there, and that is when they told us. They tried to make us feel better so they took us to the zoo, but I was sick, running a high temperature, so we soon had to go home. I remember that night, my Dad carrying me to my room and saying that Mom had gone to heaven. That's what he told me. He also told me that we would be going to live with Uncle Bill and our four cousins in Oklahoma, and that we would stay there for a while because he was going back to the boat. `Janet, honey,' he said, `I will come home and we will find a place to live.' I remember this clearly and I was only nine years old."

I tried to absorb the memories. Nine years old. She paused, then continued.

"He came back with us to Oklahoma and my last memory of him, after he said `goodbye' to us for the final time, was his getting on a plane in his dress uniform. After my Dad left, we kept waiting for him to return. It seemed like forever. We began to get ready for Thanksgiving, and Christmas was ahead, and after that we knew he would be coming home."

Chief Tozer never did come home. I felt the weight of her words as she recalled the loss; just months after her mother had died.

"The day they told me he had died, I was in complete denial. I don't know how I stayed together or how the family kept me together. Uncle Bill came to our school and took the three of us who were there out of class in order to tell us. He had tears in his eyes when he picked us up at school. His own kids were not in the car, so I thought that maybe we had been taken out of school because we had done something wrong. He didn't speak on the way home. When we got home the relatives were there again, just like when Mom had died, and you'd think I could have put two and two together and have figured out that it was bad news again ... but I didn't. Then Uncle Bill took me for the walk. He held my hand, then picked me up and said, `Janet I have something to tell you.' Then he told me my Dad had died. I don't remember anything about what happened that day after that."

When Janet finished this story, I felt numb. All of my own experiences in Vietnam, all of the books I have read about it, all of the controversy of the war, all seemed to pale before the story of this family. Their mother had been killed in September 1969; and their father was killed in Vietnam two months later. A father went off to war, came back for his wife's funeral, left his children with relatives to return to Vietnam only to be killed himself. Could there be anything more sad? Four children were now on their own with both parents gone.

It didn't end there for these four kids. Within a year, Janet's Uncle Bill took her on another walk, this time to tell her that he and his wife were divorcing. He told Janet that he just couldn't...