He did a tour of duty in Vietnam, came back, and volunteered for another. He didn’t come back from that one. He was killed on December 5, 1965. He was 36 years old. I was in middle school when he died, and it truly shook my world. I still treasure the gifts he sent me from around the world; chop sticks, handkerchiefs with my initial, maps, and postcards.

My uncle’s name was Harry Stewart Thompson. His mother’s (my grandmother’s) maiden name was Kelly. So in this poem you will see most of his name, one word at a time, throughout the poem. Stewart, Kelly, and Thompson. My uncle was a big card player. He LOVED to play cards, so that is mentioned in the poem, too. He also had just fallen in love with a Danish girl and had gotten married. It was all quite romantic.

Sadly, my brother, Curt Thompson, also died during the Vietnam War many years later, in October of 1974. His death was under mysterious circumstances so his name is not listed on the wall. He was only 25. My brother played baseball when he was young, and wrote diary type entries on lined notebook paper. So again the name Thompson, and the words baseball and wrote refer to my brother.

The image of boys who had shrimped on boats came from one of my favorite novels, Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides.