Spirits at Rest

I took a road trip right before Thanksgiving. I didn’t keep track of how many miles and miles per gallon like I usually do. This was a different kind of trip. A trip I was going to take no matter what the logistical outcome. It wasn’t a matter of could I afford it, but rather how I would afford it. My wife and I left Ashland, WI, where I live now, on a Wednesday morning. We drove across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and crossed the Mackinaw bridge. We took Interstate 75 South down to US Highway 23. We followed 23 all the way down through Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and into North Carolina. We used another road, Interstate 26 through North Carolina down into South Carolina and ended up using two-lane State and County roads to weave our way into Augusta, Georgia. We stayed in Augusta, but our destination was a scant 12 miles North of there, just across the Savannah River, to a small town called Clarks Hill in South Carolina. The Savannah River is damned at Clarks Hill and makes a lake that used to be called Clarks Hill Lake. It is now called J. Strom Thurmond Lake after the long time Senator from South Carolina. We got there on Friday in the late afternoon. I called the contact number I had, a woman named Shirley who had found my name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall website.

I had written there in the guest book for my friend, Frazier Dixon. I don’t remember what platoon Frazier was in, but I do know the night he was killed in Vietnam during a horrible night of contact. It was December 3, 1969. I was there when he died, with him, touched him. It was a brutal night. Steve Sinn, another Brother from Bravo Company 2/22, was also there with Dixon. Details are sketchy. Steve and I, in mortars, ran out of ammo or couldn’t fire. Maybe there were choppers in the air, I don’t know. We went to the line to help out. Dixon was the closest track. This logger was crazy. We were parked right up against the trees. You couldn’t see anything but leaves and we were shooting off into the darkness, spreading lead as fast as we could. The RPG screens were up, but plenty of openings from the barrage of RPG rounds that left gaps in the fence. The track that Dixon was on took an RPG round. He fell through the turret and into the burning track. We pulled him out the back door. He was already gone. I remember grabbing him. There wasn’t much there to hold on to. Steve and I took over on the 50 Cal. We melted one barrel and Steve screwed on another, then we kept firing. I don’t remember stopping until daylight. I remember doing a body count in the morning and seeing the “splash” area from the mortar rounds. Leaves shredded, blood trails, body parts. These are the images that have haunted me throughout the years along with that image and feeling of holding my Brother, Frazier Dixon as he died.

It wasn’t until 2002, 33 years later, that I made it to the Wall. I looked up Frazier Dixon in the directory. After all these years of knowing that his name was on that wall and that I was with him when he was killed, the day I showed up happen to be his birthday, October 4th. Shirley, an old friend of Frazier Dixon and his family, from Clarks Hill, SC, Frazier’s home town, was looking for information about Dixon. Shirley lives near Atlanta now, but her Mother still lives in Clarks Hill. She went to school there and knew Frazier Dixon. When she contacted me, neither she nor I knew what was going to happen, but the contact was made. Now, I had come down to attend a Veterans Program that was being put on by an Elder and retired school teacher named Mrs. Scott. Mrs. Scott also knew Dixon and his family. Mrs. Scott has had this program for Veterans since 2002. She holds it at the Bethany Baptist Church in Clarks Hill. In the past years, attendance hasn’t been very high. Mrs. Scott felt that this would be her last year putting on the program since no one seemed to appreciate it. It is simple. A few songs, a few readings, a scripture and a feed after the Veterans announced themselves with a few words about what branch of service they were in and when they served. When I heard that Shirley wanted to gather any information she could find about Frazier Dixon, to include him, in spirit, at the Veterans Program, I got interested in going down there and attending myself. What I hadn’t expected was the outpouring of humanity and emotion from the Bethany Baptist Church community in Clarks Hill.

When Shirley reported that I was coming there and that I knew Frazier in Vietnam and that I was his friend and that I was with him when he died, many faithful members of the church called others, family members of Frazier’s, school mates of Frazier’s. Other Veterans of the community, some that had never come to the Veterans Program before this, came out in force. When I got there, I went to the cemetery which is on the hill, right behind the church. I walked around and spotted the cement slab covering and the bronze flat headstone. Frazier’s name was there, big as life. I felt Like I had come full circle. It wasn’t all a dream at all. Sometimes I wondered about my own memory of Vietnam. Detached and so far away from it and with each year, I get farther away.

I always wanted to tell somebody about it. About me knowing him. A number of years ago, when I wrote in that Wall website guest book, I did get contacted by a man named Claude. Claude wrote me and told me he knew the family of Frazier Dixon and that was all. Then, a phone call, from a man named James who told me he knew some of the family too. James on the phone and Claude in a letter, I wrote back to Claude and told him how I knew Frazier, but I spared him the details.

It was such an honor to meet Claude and James in person at the Veterans Program. They both remembered the contact. We figured it was in 2002. Claude had gotten copies of the letter I had written him and it was included in the scrapbook and album that Mrs. Scott had from the Veterans Programs of the years before. I got to read a letter I wrote in 2002.

It was an honor to meet all the people, every single one of them. When it was my turn to speak, I told them that I had the spirit of Frazier Dixon with me for many years and that I was bringing him home. I wasn’t going to forget him. I was bringing his spirit home and going to share him with them. I noticed that flowers seem to be on every grave at every cemetery in the South. As we drove, we saw oceans of flowers as we passed by cemetery plots. I bought a lawn base and an arrangement of seasonal flowers and put them next to Dixon’s headstone at Bethany Baptist Church. People started to arrive, and Shirley came. She is the only one I knew and I was waiting for her. She would introduce me to people. I knew her Mother would be there and a sister of hers. She also told me of a man who was Frazier’s best friend during high school. His name is Anthony. I met Anthony first. And Anthony’s sister who was helping with the dinner. Then I met Shirley’s mother and sister. Then I met several people all in a row. James, the guy I talked to on the phone and Claude, the man who wrote me years earlier. I met Debra, one of Frazier’s first cousins. I met an Aunt and three other cousins. Other school mates and other members of the community that remembered Frazier. I met Mrs. Scott. Everyone seemed very excited that I was there.

I was excited to be there. As I sat in the church and the male choir group was singing, I had a feeling come over me that I can’t explain in any words known to mankind. What was I doing there? Why had I traveled through my lifetime, and now was receiving this gift of being with people that made me feel so welcome and warm? Like they knew me and had known me for a long time?

After the program and through the dinner, I talked with so many people from Clarks Hill. A friend who described Frazier as being like a big brother to him and a cousin who remembered the military car in the driveway a long time ago. The same military car that brought the news of Frazier’s death to his family. Those Veterans who knew him and knew he had died in combat action, all wanted to know if it was true, if he was really gone. Many told me that they didn’t believe it for many years. Now, after all these years, they knew he was dead, but they still hadn’t known the truth. They didn’t believe the Army when they came and told them. The casket was sealed shut. No pry bar or anything could have opened it. The Army delivered it this way, sealed, with a cement cover, cemented in place. I knew why it was sealed. It puzzled them for many years as no explanation can be remembered. A year or two ago, I wrote some very personal memoirs about my time in Vietnam. I did this to leave a legacy to my Grandchildren. In that writing, I explained my involvement with Frazier Dixon. I never knew why I was ready to share that, but I was. Then, all this happens and I had to share it again. I didn’t want to go through the whole story in detail while visiting these friends and family. I printed out the story and gave it to Shirley, she herself a Veteran by the way, and nodded my head as to why the casket was sealed and that he did die and that I was with him.

Some of the faces were disappointed, as if I was going to tell them that he was okay. Others, most of them, exhaled because they finally found out what happened and how he died, and they heard it from his friend, and not the Army. They used the word “Closure”. One man held my hand for five minutes as I stood there and held his back. Debra, his cousin, took us to the house, or where the house was, where Frazier grew up. We stood out in the road talking, six of us, where Grandma and Grandpa lived, by the ball field, on a road called Dew Drop Inn. I heard all about how Anthony and Frazier were liked by all the girls. I heard about how they’d walk to town and to Bethany for services. I stood there and was with those that remember him and love him. I’d been to war as a young man. I held my friend when he died. 38 years, almost to the day, later, here I was, in his hometown, with the people who he went to school with, with his cousins and with his friends. I am so blessed by some power more significant than I can ever imagine. To be led here, at this time, in this life. To heal and be a healer, to let others be healers and to share smiles, brotherhood and love. Mending parts of our broken hearts.

Closure. Knowing that it’s okay now. Knowing we can let go of his spirit. Knowing he won’t be back because a friend came and told us so. I was the savior that day for so many, but they saved me as well. It was closure for me to see his childhood home, his relatives and friends. They know one of their own is gone and they reached out to touch me, a small part of him. I reached out to them.

Shirley has been great through all of this. She made us feel so welcome. Right from the start when we met her at the motel in Augusta. We went out to eat and had a special dinner. We talked on the phone. She even called as we traveled home to check our progress, telling us that everyone was praying for our safe travel. Telling me we were family now. We are part of Frazier’s community. Plans were being made for when I return, whether it be for next years Veterans Program, or for another trip I might want to make to come and visit. She gave me a fine gift, a plaque with the words of a song called “Wind Beneath My Wings”, along with the CD of Bette Midler singing it, and gave my wife a fine crystal bowl. These people called me their hero. They thanked me and hugged me and made me one of their own. But more, they gave me love. And closure. And I made new friends. And I have more family now. Mrs. Scott, getting on in years and wondering why the attendance at the Veterans Program wasn’t very good, had said that this would be the last time she puts on the program. She changed her mind when that church and dining hall was full of people. She has decreed that she will have one next year. In itself, when a ninety one year old elder makes plans for an event next year, that means something.

We left Augusta, GA on Sunday morning and drove through Georgia and into Tennessee. We passed through Nashville, and into Kentucky. On to Paducah and into Illinois. Right up the gut, and a night of sleep in Mt. Vernon, we kept up the Northerly trek and landed in Ashland on Monday evening. We ate BBQ and southern fried chicken while we visited the South. Boiled peanuts, fried pies and fresh pink lady apples. I brought home country ham steaks, jam, jelly, hot chow chow, hot BBQ sauce and sorghum, which I plan on using soon on some buckwheat pancakes. That church dinner was good, too. I’ll never eat Macaroni n’ cheese without baking it to form a thick crust on top. And I’ll put some ham hocks in my green beans. And grits. I like grits. And have you ever tried the Hash n’ rice? We have Shirley on the speed dial. I have a card with addresses and phone numbers for Claude. Debra will be sending me a picture of Frazier from High School days. I’ll send Mrs. Scott a thank you note, and other letters of thanks to others, especially Shirley, my newest sister. She has told me that there were some that didn’t make it to the program and that they want to meet me some day. I told her to tell them that I will be back.

In my life here at home, I follow the teachings of a Native American Spiritualist. I consider him a teacher and a leader. He is a Vietnam combat Veteran like I am. When I told him I was going to this program and told him of my connection with Frazier Dixon, he told me that I had been carrying that mans spirit for all these years and it was time to take him home. When I got back and told him of the experience, he gave me an Eagle feather. He explained to me that the eagle feather represented the Warrior Spirit of Frazier Dixon and that I was to go back to Clarks Hill and bring this feather and give it to the community so everyone could share it. I’m making plans now to return there later this year, possibly in Spring. Maybe I’ll do some fishing on that Savannah River when I get back down there.

All in all, a whirlwind chapter in this spinning life, and a tough act to follow. I’ll remember this experience and hold it right up there with watching the children being born and getting married. And I will get back there, to Clarks Hill, again some day.

Peace to all of you my brothers. Peace in our hearts.

Spadoman