WHAT I CAN DO - I WILL -

Ron Forrester was ever so much more than name, rank, serial number and date he disappeared. He was someone's brother, twin, son, ex-husband, father, best friend. He was the finest person I've ever met. He didn't have a mean bone in his body. He even had to teach himself to pull rank when his crew chief was messing around and not doing his job!

My dad was a bit of a grump but Ron just baited him unmercifully. Ron was an Aggie, of course, so he had to pull all the hazing and Aggie stuff on us. I have a picture of him hazing my sister Sandra, with him in his Corps uniform (he was married in his Corps uniform). He had a tiny bugle and would play Reveille when my Dad was napping (Dad had sleep apnea and never got enough sleep). Ron was my best man. He saw how nervous I was and he said he was going to sing the Aggie War Hymn and french-kiss the bride! He might've done it, too. He was famous for pranks on his friends at their weddings. He and Don kidnapped my new wife and were going to let her off with a dime at a drive-in joint in South Odessa but they relented. My ex-wife was not mad. She adored Ron, too.

Ron eventually paid for his marriage pranks. When he and Janna were about to get married (it might've been after their wedding?) some of his Aggie friends took him out to the country between Odessa and Crane, stripped him to his underwear, and LEFT HIM! The Highway Patrol picked him up and brought him back to town! He wouldn't tell the troopers who'd done it to him.

Ron was a twin. I don't know if you've discovered it but he and Don were identical twins. They were both injured in middle school when someone brought a blasting cap, not knowing what it was, and the twins, Mike Swinney, and the doofus teacher hooked it up to a battery. Mike's right index finger was blown off at the last knuckle (tip). The twins had scars on their hands. I believe Ron's were the worst--that's how some people who didn't know them could tell them apart. Twins couldn't have been more different than those two! Ron was into everything, never knew a stranger, had boundless self-confidence. Don was quiet and shy and diffident. I think Don may be a social worker now. At least a helping professional of some sort. He came to my Dad's funeral and I was so glad to see him (and so very sad because he looks so much like Ron!)

Ron married a girl named Janna, who didn't know or like my family, for some reason (jealousy?). At any rate, she never understood why we regarded Ron as our family and was put off by it. My mother said she'd since expressed regret to her about her behavior. Janna and Ron were divorced shortly before he went to Vietnam.

They had a daughter, Karoni, who's about 28-30 now I guess. I met her once because I had seen her name in the paper and wrote to commend her for keeping active in the MIA program when she'd never really known her father. She called me about the time she was graduating to tell me how sad she was that her father couldn't be there to share it with her and asked me to tell her about him. I told her he'd adored her and would have been so proud! I told her what a fine person he was and how much fun/how funny he was. We went to lunch together with my own daughter, who's now 26.

Karoni Forrester wrote again after I put the remembrance on the Virtual Web but I've lost track of her again now. My mother used to keep track of Ron's family because she was still in Odessa, TX, where we're all from. However, she died in 1999.

I went to our 35th high school reunion last year. I enjoyed myself but Ron's ex-girlfriend was there and I was filled with sadness for him and others of our class who died for Johnson and McNamara and all the others who've died since graduation.

My father and I could not talk about Vietnam because he said Vietnam vets were a bunch of cry babies and couldn't have fought in his war. I told him that any soldier who served during his time had very long periods in rear echelon areas and then months in terrifying battles, then if they survived, the same long periods in rear echelons again. Finally they went home, to the universal adoration of the whole world. Vietnam vets were scooped up from fairly normal lives in the States, briefly (usually 6-8 weeks) trained, whisked off to Vietnam, arriving, usually, less than one full 24-hour period after starting the trip, put into hot, steamy, constantly dangerous Hell for a year or more. If they were lucky, they got a two week R&R and then shipped right back from nice safe Honolulu or Tokyo or Thailand, right back into 24-hour 7 day a week Hell. Then they were relieved of their weapons (if they survived), thrown onto airplanes and whisked back to the nice safe United States where people not only didn't thank them for their sacrifice, but they threw things at them and called them "baby killers" and blamed them for the war ... less than 24 hours after having people shooting at them. No wonder so many were so messed up. So he and I just couldn't discuss it.

I believed, for at least 10 years, that Ron was captive or was evading the Vietnamese. The reason I did is that I (my whole family for that matter) am somewhat psychic. I used to feel that he was standing right behind me and that all I had to do to see him was to turn around. I was frightened by that because I thought he must be dead and I feared what it would do to me to reach out. I was ashamed but frightened nevertheless (he'd have reached out to me in a microsecond!) I never actually saw him but thought many times that I felt his presence. As I said, he's the only person I've ever known who I thought capable of that kind of personal power. Finally, about 1983 or so I stopped feeling his presence on occasion and I haven't felt it since. I think he must have died. His brother Don, on the other hand, had a dream, when Ron disappeared, of a plane in flames. I told you my whole family is psychic? My sister Sandra, who might've easily married Ron if the timing had been right, said she'd felt the same presence I had. My mother said she had, too, and my grandmother dreamed that Ron had come back from Vietnam years later, entirely gray-haired, with horrible suffering etched on his face and terrible scars and she had seen him working on his car like he'd done so many times.

Ron's absence keeps me in perspective. I have had all these years he didn't have and, even though not all of them were happy, I had them. I wish he had. I hope some day there is a full accounting but I dread the day when the news announces that Ron's remains have been identified and are on their way home. As long as he is not found I do not finally, irrevocably, have to say that he is dead.

Another more distant friend, Ronnie Beets, has his name on the wall, too. He was a Green Beret and came back from Vietnam in a wheelchair and grievously disabled. He eventually died of his injuries. If you haven't seen the actual Wall in D.C., do so someday. You'll never forget the experience.

It's interesting to share with you. So many younger people get tired of hearing us old fogeys talk about how bad we had it. Until you face a draft and induction into the military and possible shipment out to an unpopular and very dangerous war I guess it's hard to understand. Unless you have to look back at your high school year books and remember how many classmates went and never came back.

Thank you for your interest and compassion and the best of luck to you in your search.