Saturday, March 7, 1998

Family faces its unresolved feelings

By Ken Garfield / Knight Ridder Newspapers

Kayce Hendricks of Charlotte, N.C., never knew her uncle Stan. She's only 17. He died in Vietnam long before she got the chance to laugh at his jokes or listen to his stories of being a high school football star in Liberty, S.C.

All Kayce knew about her uncle was that he was funny on the outside and serious inside. That he was handsome. And that his death 30 years ago on a distant battlefield opened a wound that never closed.

Who would have thought those wounds could be healed by a teen-ager whose high school project inspired her family to face its unresolved feelings?

Paula Hendricks said her kid brother's death at age 19 in Quang Tri Province rarely came up before Kayce started asking questions. It's been a lifetime since a Western Union telegram arrived with news that U.S. Marine Cpl. Stanley R. Pettit had been shot in the neck and chest by the Viet Cong. No one wants to relive a nightmare. No one wants to dredge up old pain for elderly parents, who keep many of their son's papers in a cedar chest in their rural S.C. home.

"A lot of things were put on the back burner," said Hendricks, 51. "Some ends were left untied."

But what does a 17-year-old know of emotional loose ends? When it came time for Hendricks' daughter, Kayce, to do her senior exit essay at West Mecklenburg High School, she chose to focus on her uncle. She was always fascinated by the turbulent '60s. She decided to explore that turbulence through one of its casualties.

So Kayce asked her mom and grandparents to rummage through old files. She asked a million questions. When she was done, she had compiled a remarkably moving book of memories, simply entitled "Stanley Russell Pettit."

It begins with the photo of the handsome young soldier you see here, the all-around kid whose football jersey, No. 44, was retired by Pendleton (S.C.) High. It moves on to the Western Union telegrams, the story in the local paper Ñ "Pettit funeral" Ñ and then poems and letters reflecting the raw edges of family grief.

There's a letter to the Anderson Independent from Stanley's dad, Paul, "Heroes Die, Hippies Live And Heartbreak Is Bitter." In "PaPa's thoughts about Stanley," the father lashes out over not learning of his son's death until eight days after it occurred.

Paula Hendricks writes in 1977 of the pain that comes with the changing of the leaves in autumn, for autumn is when Stan died: "When September comes, one sad memory returns to haunt each day with unanswered questions."

Kayce's book ends with a poem written by her grandfather. "Look homeward my beloved son!" he wrote. "Above life's rugged sea. Hark!! A gentle voice is speaking. Yes! The master calls for Thee!"

In a way, that gentle voice belongs now to Kayce, who got her family remembering, talking and sharing. Above all, the high school student taught her family how to live with painful feelings that will never die.

"It's good to see how these things affect you," Hendricks said. "How they make you stronger and more able to recognize the vulnerability we have. And be willing to accept that."

Said Kayce: "I learned why my family is like they are. How close they are and how close they were and how much faith all of them had. And how short life is."

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(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

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(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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