Letters from Vietnam resurrect brother's voice

Written by Bettina Thiel
Thursday, 29 October 2009 11:52

Barely 15 years old, Jill Hunting’s life changed forever when her older brother Pete was killed in an ambush in Vietnam. The year was 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson was president, and the Cold War was at its peak.

But Pete was not a soldier. He was in Vietnam on a peace mission, working through International Peace Services (IPS), a now defunct precursor to the Peace Corps. Though tensions ran high and killings were the order of the day, the United States’ military intervention had not yet fully started.

When Hunting’s mother learned of her son’s death, she uttered a scream of pain. Subsequently she never talked about the incident again, at least not to her daughters. Indeed, when years later Jill asked her for his letters, her mother claimed they had been destroyed in a basement flood.

Hunting and her two sisters had to deal with their own questions. It wasn’t until 40 years later that they found his letters stashed away in her mother’s house, and reading them resurrected Pete’s voice.

Hunting wrote a book about the experience, “Finding Pete — Rediscovering the Brother I Lost in Vietnam,” published by Wesleyan University Press and released this month.

Hunting will be in Woodbridge at the First Church Congregational on Meetinghouse Lane Sunday, Nov. 8, from 2-4 p.m. to present her book and historical footage from that time.

Hunting’s mother, Mary Russell Hunting, came from an old Woodbridge family, and her father from New Haven. Pete and his sister Carole, only 18 months apart, had strong connections to Woodbridge, where they spent their early childhood on the family farm. Pete is buried in East Side Cemetery, as are his parents, uncle and grandparents. A nature trail off Newton Road is dedicated to his name.

Hunting ended up in California, where she lives now, a writer and editor in the food and wine industry.

She said when those letters fell into her hands in 2004, she had already decided to find out about Pete’s life and death. Once she started inquiries, other people came forward who had letters from her brother. In all, she collected 175 letters.

“It was as if Pete had come back to life,” she said — “energetic, funny, smart and insightful. It was the same brother I remembered.”

Pete was a student at Wesleyan University when IPS recruited young people for development aid in Vietnam. Hunting said her brother expected to be teaching English, but conditions often called for workers, builders and engineers, and he ended up digging wells or repairing wind mills instead. Before too long he was promoted to supervisor of their operation in Vietnam.

He loved his work there. “The peasants are fine folks,” Hunting quotes from a period news article he was interviewed for. “The food is good; a little rice, plenty of fish and fruit, and delicious vegetables of all kinds that haven’t even a name in English. You feel fine. There is not much sanitation, but the people are healthy because they eat right.”

Safety is all right, he thought, especially when compared to chances of getting killed in an automobile accident on an American highway.

Some of his letters speak of political developments in Indochina at the time. “They were chronicling the beginning of the Vietnam War from eye level,” Hunting said.

He was killed on Nov. 12, 1965, days before the first major ground battle of the war. The death of an American aid worker made the headlines.

Hunting structured her book by alternating Pete’s story with chapters about her own story. She said she contacted and befriended her brother’s friends. “I found so many people who never forgot him,” she said.

As for herself, “It was a work of reconciliation,” she said. “It brought my brother closer.” The book became a bridge, not just from the past to the present, but into the future as well.

Hunting initiated a sister city relationship between Sonoma, where she now lives, and Phan Rang where Pete worked before his death.

In addition, she supported the endeavor to create a memorial dedicated to civilians killed in war. The sculpture will be placed in front of the new Institute of Peace in Washington.

Hunting’s story will be included in a documentary by Greg Stern about letters from Vietnam. She met Stern when he traveled to Woodbridge to obtain footage of the church where Pete’s memorial service was held, and the trail where Pete played as a boy.

What the whole experience has left her with is a sense of awe at life’s vagaries.

“Now I can hardly wait what not to expect,” she said.