Grief Amid Joy : As War’s End Is Cheered, Sailor Is Mourned

Adelaide Fahey hasn’t read or watched news about the Persian Gulf for the better part of three weeks. She’s missed the jubilant homecomings, the boastful victory proclamations and the teary family reunions.

“I can’t take it,” Fahey said, biting her lip to keep from crying. “I am jealous of the ones coming home. I am happy for them, but in turn, I am jealous. Why can’t it be my son?”

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class James Frederick Crockford Jr. died Feb. 22 when his helicopter crashed into the Red Sea while transporting supplies and armaments to ships in the John F. Kennedy Battle Group.

Crockford, who had lived in Venice and graduated from Culver City High School in 1979, has never been found. Navy officials told Fahey that it is unlikely his body will ever be recovered because the aircraft, which suffered a mechanical failure, sank thousands of feet into the sea.

“They told us it is too deep, too treacherous and too costly,” said Gwendy Crockford-Dainard, the air crewman’s sister. “All we can do is go to the Red Sea and throw flowers on the ocean.”

But that, they say, isn’t enough. Just weeks after a cease-fire was declared in the Persian Gulf War, the two Canoga Park women fear Americans already have forgotten about the 211 men and women who died in the war, both in combat and so-called non-hostile missions.

“I want to scream out to the world and tell them, ‘My brother is dead! Somebody wake up and at least say thank you!’ ” said Crockford-Dainard, an executive secretary in Calabasas who has been wearing her brother’s Navy Air Crew wings as a tribute to his sacrifice. “The Navy has been good about it, but I want something more.”

Fahey, a waitress for 17 years at Junior’s Delicatessen in Westwood, said her son deserves to be honored along with the planeloads of returning troops.

“I didn’t want him to die,” Fahey said, choking over her words. “Sure, I was very proud. I told everyone who came into the restaurant that my son is over there. He was a hero. But when he died, it just broke my heart.”

As the nation readies for its biggest wave of victory parties since World War II, Fahey and her daughter are holding a memorial service today in tribute to Crockford and as a reminder to all Americans that the grim realities of war still remain close to home for many families.

Crockford’s relatives will be joined by Navy representatives and Christopher Marsiglia, one of the sailor’s high school friends, at the 3 p.m. service. It will be held at the Church of Latter-day Saints, 10123 Oakdale Ave., Chatsworth, and is open to the public.

The Navy will present Fahey with an American flag, and the family will show a short videotape about Crockford, who turned 30 last November. The tape includes a collage of snapshots of the boy growing up, many from his grandmother’s home in Rochester, N.Y., where he spent most of his childhood after his parents were divorced.

The tape, set to the song “Wind Beneath My Wings,” by Bette Midler, ends with a handwritten message from Crockford-Dainard, who said she revered her brother as the father she never had.

“You were always my hero,” she wrote, “I’ll love you forever.”

Fahey said she and her daughter would like to see a memorial erected to honor those who died in the war so that Crockford’s contribution to the allied victory will never be forgotten. The two women would also like President Bush to write them a letter or do something special to recognize casualties of the war.

“He died because of a mistake, our mistake, our government’s mistake,” Crockford-Dainard said. “It just makes me mad.”

For now, though, Fahey is struggling to sort out feelings of grief and guilt about her son, who she fears never understood how much she loved him.

“As I sit here, it gets worse and worse every day,” Fahey said one night this week as she and her family traded stories about her only son. “The guilt feeling, that I couldn’t hold him and tell him how much I loved him. It is driving me crazy.”

Kevin Dainard, her son-in-law, wrapped his arm around Fahey as Crockford-Dainard tried to calm her mother by reading aloud from Crockford’s last letter home.

“Make sure you tell Grandma that I send all my love even though I don’t show it all the time,” Crockford wrote to his niece, Candice Dainard, 10. “And tell her not to worry about me.”

With that, Fahey stopped fighting the tears and quietly began to sob.