‘Wall’ Is Father’s Day Mecca for Sons, Daughters of War

Corky Condon was 10 when she last celebrated Father’s Day in June, 1967. That was the year Lt. Cmdr. Robert Condon was killed by an enemy missile. It was 11 days before her 11th birthday.

On Sunday, for the first time in 25 years, she will mark the occasion again--this time by placing a card and a single red rose at the Wall--the Vietnam Memorial, where her father’s name and legacy are etched into the black granite.

She hopes she will have company. The organization for which she directs volunteer efforts, Sons and Daughters In Touch, plans speeches, songs and a visit to the memorial over the weekend. It will be an opportunity to bond with others who lost their fathers in a war that produced a unique kind of pain because of the controversy that surrounded it.

“I had people tell me that my daddy used to kill babies and that’s why he died,” said Condon, who also volunteers at the Wall on weekends.

In Touch was begun in 1989 by Tony Cordero, a California native who lives in Oregon. On the 20th anniversary of his father’s burial, he phoned the Friends of the Vietnam Memorial, hoping to locate someone with whom he could share the experience of losing a father to the war. His determination was captured in an article in Parade magazine. He got more than 1,000 responses, half of them from other sons and daughters of Vietnam War dead.

Despite the political turmoil over the war--an underlying cause of much of the stress from which children of slain soldiers suffered--the group’s current director, Wanda Ruffin, said that In Touch has no political aim.

“There are people in our group that were very anti-war and others who were supportive,” she said. “But it’s one of the miracles that happens at the memorial, as people from opposite sides politically end up hugging each other.”

The organization has grown mostly through word of mouth, or by contacting a friend of a friend, Ruffin said. The Dallas-based Electronic Data Systems has set up a data base that now contains the names of more than 500 sons and daughters of Vietnam soldiers. Hewlett-Packard and the First National Bank of Chicago are among the contributors of computers and other office equipment.

In addition, five regional groups across the country have been trying to find sons and daughters, relying on local sponsors to help defray expenses for the Father’s Day trek here.

In California, Mary McMaster raised funds through carwashes and walk-a-thons to pay her expenses and those of six other sons and daughters from the Riverside area. California chapters of Vietnam veterans’ groups also have lent their support.

McMaster, who became involved with In Touch in 1989 after she read about Cordero’s efforts, never knew her father. Sgt. Dawn Albert Hawkins, a Green Beret, was killed on his 23rd birthday in 1967, five months before she was born.

“I was 16 or 17 years old before I realized that this had an impact on my life,” said McMaster. “It sparked a real need for information and understanding, because when you told someone your father died in Vietnam, nobody wanted to talk about it.”

She said that of the 80 California members of In Touch, only 25 or 30 are active. “Some don’t want to get involved . . . it’s a painful thing to bring up, but for others it’s been a wonderful healing process.”

The weekend ceremony will include a speech by Jan Scruggs--whose dream became the war memorial, which marks its 10th anniversary on Veterans Day. Although controversial when it was proposed in the late 1970s, it is now the most popular national monument in Washington, with 3.5 million visitors annually.

McMaster said she is unsure what feelings will emerge when she visits the Wall for the first time. She echoed the sentiments of many “siblings,” as she describes the sense of support she expects to draw from the group.

“We’ll all be there for each other,” McMaster said. “I’ll be able to share the experience with others who share that common tie . . . that emotional bond to the Wall.”