A Mother’s Words
Mrs. Eleanor Wimbish of Glen Burnie, Maryland, is the mother ofWilliam
R‘ Stocks, who died in the Vietnam War‘ For years she left letters to her son under his name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.
.
.
Dear Bill,
Today is February l3, 1984. I came to this black wall again to see and touch your name, and as I do I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this black wall, is your mother's heart. A heart broken 15 years ago today, when you lost your life in Vietnam.
And as I look at your name, William R. Stocks, I think of how many, many times I used to wonder how scared and homesick you must have been in that strange country called Vietnam. And if and how it might have changed you, for you were the most happy-go-lucky kid in the world, hardly ever sad or unhappy. And until the day I die, I will see you as you laughed at me, even when I was very mad at you,
and the next thing I knew, we were laughing together.
But on this past New Year‘s Day, I had my answer. I talked by phone to a friend of yours From Michigan, who spent your last Christmas and the last four months of your life with you. Jim told me how you died, for he was there and saw the helicopter crash. He told me how you had flown your quota and had not been scheduled to fly that day. How
the regular pilot was unable to fly and had been replaced by someone with less experience. How they did not know the
exact cause of the crash. . . .