Reunion Reinforces Reality of Vietnam for a War-Scarred Nurse and Veteran

For 20 years, no one seemed to care that Sharon Deehan had been a nurse in Vietnam.

Then Deehan, a Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills assistant administrator, attended a company retreat in May, 1988. When someone asked about her stint in Vietnam, she felt she “had finally been given permission to open up.”

“TV was my only catharsis for a while. There was at least one episode of ‘M*A*S*H’ for each of my hospital experiences,” Deehan said.

Television also brought back one specific memory. While switching channels one day in 1985, Deehan saw a segment on the U.S. Olympic Ski Team. A name from her past--Jack Benedict--and his picture flashed on the screen. But Deehan suppressed thoughts of Benedict until after the Kaiser retreat.

Benedict, an Army captain at the time, lost his legs in 1969 when he stepped on a mine in Vietnam. After that, his kidneys shut down and he became Deehan’s patient for about two months in the renal intensive care unit of the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon. Deehan remembered that Benedict was an officer--there were only a few in her ward--and he talked about sports.

Three months ago, Deehan contacted Ellie Vargas, Southern California coordinator of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project. Deehan became interested in the project as part of coming to terms with her Vietnam experience. (The project is raising money for a memorial to the role of women in Vietnam.)

Vargas put Deehan in touch with Benedict, who thought he remembered Deehan. “He should,” she said with a laugh. “There were only two nurses in the unit. Each one was on for a 12-hour shift.”

Now, 20 years later, Benedict was reunited Tuesday with his former Vietnam nurse in her Westlake Village house.

“Being in each other’s presence makes Vietnam a continued reality for me. . . . It reinforces the reality that we were both in Vietnam,” Deehan said.

“He brought pictures of himself in the hospital, but I don’t recognize that man. In person, he’s like the man I remember.

“I feel good that I was part of the team that helped him recover. But he never thought he was going to die. He’s the chauvinist I thought he’d be. He’s a good guy and he’s friendly. I think we’ll see each other again,” she said.

Benedict frequently gets together with his Army buddies, but Deehan often has wished she had had a support group to deal with the losses in her personal and military lives. She corresponded with her Vietnam nurse roommate for a few years and still keeps in touch with one doctor.

“Vietnam was the most significant event in my life,” the soft-spoken 45-year-old Deehan said. “It made me into an excellent nurse. It gave me my professional direction and taught me the value of camaraderie and teamwork.”

Deehan, orphaned in her sophomore year of college, joined the Army in 1967 to finance the rest of her education. “I knew nothing about Vietnam. I was a small-town girl from Phoenix, N.Y., who had lived a sheltered life.”

She volunteered for Vietnam, although “it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be,” she said.

“We cleaned their kidneys and shipped the men to other hospitals. Antibiotics available now were not around then. Many patients died. Most were comatose, and I never got to talk or listen to them. We rarely knew who lived or died once they left,” she said.

Benedict knew that many patients in the medical unit died. After his legs were amputated, he came home to a Denver hospital for rehabilitation. He walked on prosthetic devices 4 1/2 months after the mine explosion, he said. Within the same year, he taught himself to ski.

“Post-Vietnam War syndrome is nonsense,” Benedict said. “I’m a tough cookie. I had been wounded twice before I lost my legs. Sure, war is traumatic. It messes up some minds, but not mine. Everyone can cope. I did. My biggest fear was that the Army wouldn’t use me anymore and that my fighting days were ended.”

Before the war, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska and married his college sweetheart. They now have two sons, ages 20 and 24.

He recalls that his younger son, who never saw him with legs, thought all dads took their legs off at night. “I’ve always worn shorts and when someone stared at me, the boys wanted to respond. I told them it was OK. The stares were just normal curiosity.

“I think all wars are immoral, especially Vietnam. As for my own wounds, I’ve never been conscious of super-depression over losing my legs. I was 26, not 18. I had traveled and lived. If I had been 18 or 19, I don’t know. . . . I enlisted because I knew I’d do a good job,” he said.

He went on to command infantry units in the United States, retiring as a major in 1978. Benedict then became competition director with the Handicapped Sports Assn. Now, as director of disabled skiers for the U.S. Ski Team, he travels the world and will join a team of alpine skiers in Japan in February.

After her stint in the Army, Deehan worked at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, where dialysis and kidney transplantation were developed. She later taught medical and surgical nursing at Lawrence Memorial in Medford, Mass., for 10 years, eventually becoming director of the school. Five years ago, she became assistant director of the Los Angeles County School of Nursing and joined the Kaiser staff in 1986.

Recently, Deehan went to Washington to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. “It was like opening an old wound,” she said. “I was so very sad.”

Benedict visits the Vietnam Memorial Wall whenever he’s near Washington. He knows the names of everyone in his unit who was killed. “I only go to pay my respect to men who served with me,” he said. “They did their jobs well.”

He also teaches scuba diving in Denver. Once a year, he visits California, joining fellow scuba instructors who dive for abalone and lobster near the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. This year, Benedict arrived early for the dive to spend the day with his former Vietnam nurse.