Send Down the Rain(25)
If you listened long enough, you got to hear her story. You could also buy her New York Times number one bestselling autobiography. Suzy was the beautiful blue-eyed daughter of a Vietnamese model who’d fallen in love with a GI Joe. Given his death somewhere in southeast Asia, Suzy had never met her father—a Marine helicopter pilot. She had accidentally become the spokesperson for an entire generation when, nearly two decades ago, she began talking openly about the framed telegram and the folded flag her mother kept on her father’s side of the bed—for years after his death.
Her quest started with a simple question: “Hi, my name is Suzy. Does anyone know what happened to my father?” No one knew. Not even the military. He was initially listed as MIA. Eventually that changed to KIA for reasons that were never explained to her.
In an effort to discover the truth, she took to the airwaves. Her personal approach drew listeners. By the thousands. And what became one person’s quest soon became the mantra for a generation. Hence, her audience grew, and grew loyal. As her platform expanded, so did her focus. From a missing father to missing children to getting women and children out of the sex trade to interventions for those lost to addiction. Suzy focused on reaching lost loved ones.
She would have made a great medic. She was not afraid to run back across the battlefield. But every November and every July, Suzy would faithfully honor the military crowd in the buildup to both Veterans and Independence Day. She invited men to call in and share their stories or make a request. Anything to get them talking. Most requested classic sixties and seventies rock with a rather strong emphasis on Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival, but some had an affection for Janis Joplin. Suzy was a regular honoree at Bike Week in Daytona and at the annual Ride to the Wall, where a couple hundred thousand black-leathered and tatted men rode eardrum-splitting bikes from all over the US to converge on Washington, DC. She was a regular on the news networks regarding anything having to do with veterans and had made a name for herself as the spokesperson for the silent generation—those who went, were lied to, lost, came home, were spit on, and never said a word.
Suzy True became known as the voice of the voiceless.
In an odd twist, she became a connector in a world where connections had been severed. Through letters or callins, Suzy was able to help more than one military wife or child come to know the true story of their father’s death or disappearance in a country twelve thousand miles away. Oddly enough, in all her searching she had never been able to learn her own father’s fate. But in a world characterized by stoic silence, Suzy had garnered such affection that more than one man had pledged undying fidelity and sworn he’d take a bullet for her. When critics challenged her methods or her subject or her steely unwillingness to “just let it go already,” thousands came to her vocal defense. They also loved her for her uncanny ability: while some people possess the gift of never forgetting a face, Suzy never forgot a voice. Some guy would call in once to request a song or send out happy birthday wishes to a buddy he lost or tell a story about a dog he’d rescued from a village. A year later he’d call again and she’d pipe up, “Oh yeah, you’re Bob from Topeka. Served with the 3rd Special Forces unit. Two tours. Seventy-one, or was it ’72? Lost a leg to a bayonet in a tunnel, I think it was.”
Many of the bikes that made the trip to DC were covered in Suzy 4 Prez bumper stickers.
Suzy had a way of crawling through the phone line and soliciting trust from any ear on the other end. Her popularity put her in the unique position of being able to solve puzzles that the government could not. Soldiers who had been shunned by the very country that sent them into harm’s way and then spit on them when they returned tended not to trust the authorities who sent them. But Suzy was another story. Suzy was one of them. One of the abandoned and rejected. This trust had gained her valuable contacts inside both Langley and the Pentagon—all with top-level security clearance. These back-channel sources allowed her to gain and provide truth to those in need—and also provided her with an iron-clad method of exposing the liars who sought to profit off America’s newfound sympathy for her soldiers.
In what might have been her greatest talent, she could spot a fake a mile—or three thousand miles—away. At the first whiff of something fishy, she’d solicit her back-channel contacts. Within a few hours or a day, that man’s entire life would be laid open for all the world to see. On several occasions she’d surprised the man on the air and publicly undressed him before all the world. Given this, few attempted to fool her.
The idea of the “soldier of fraud” was nothing new. Men had done it for centuries. Cowards who skirted the war only to return with a flag draped around their shoulders. But given the post-Iraq culture and America’s long-overdue empathy for the boys that she’d asked to become men before their time, more men began crawling out of the woodwork with never-before-told stories of both terror and heroism. And because many of America’s dodgers who burned their notices on their way to throwing rotten fruit and spitting through the fence were now looking for a way to say “I’m really sorry” to an entire generation, fewer tellers of tales were questioned or asked to validate their claims. Especially those told by men who were sent to go and kill a yellow man. Not only was it insensitive to press for credentials, but given the decades of history that had passed, how could they? Vietnam was a long time ago and halfway around the world.