THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9504290335
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Until this year, Freedom Now of Virginia was an activist POW/MIA group with a national membership of 250 dedicated to one cause: The rescue from southeast Asia of all surviving American soldiers left behind in the Vietnam War.
The group's chief enemy was the communist government of Vietnam. But Freedom Now also battled a disbelieving Congress, three presidents and others who claimed their cause was fruitless. There were no POWs remaining in Vietnam, the critics said.
That didn't stop Freedom Now. Since 1986, the group raised money, consciousness, and the POW/MIA flag over buildings throughout Virginia and nationwide.
But where politicians and platitudes failed, the passage of time has succeeded. After almost a decade of fighting, Freedom Now is calling it quits.
``Support is dwindling,'' explained Terry Tranbarger Wood, a nurse at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News and former president of Freedom Now. ``The membership dropped off to where we got down to only the board of directors.''
Wood blames the Clinton administration for some of the decline, claiming that the president has done his best to put the POW/MIA issue on a back burner. But other former Freedom Now members think membership has dropped because interest in the group's cause has declined everywhere, including among some veterans.
``There are a lot of veterans who have kind of mellowed out, and their opinions and thinking have kind of dwindled away to where they have given up,'' said Willis Darden, a 51-year-old Vietnam veteran who served with the U.S. Navy Seabees in South Vietnam during 1969. ``They think that it is over and that there is nobody left.''
But Freedom Now's demise, Darden says, also reflects a healing that has been slow in coming, that only time could bring.
``It is natural,'' he said. ``It's just people trying to adapt and finally be at peace with themselves and get it over with.''
In its main objective, Freedom Now failed. No one was returned alive to the United States from captivity in Vietnam during the past 10 years. In fact, there are still 2,205 soldiers still classifed as unaccounted for from the Vietnam conflict.
But in attempting what some called impossible, the group accomplished much.
Freedom Now played a leading role to establish a Vietnam Veterans memorial at Huntington Park in Newport News. The final payment on the $250,000 structure was made last year, after another fund-raising effort was completed.
Freedom Now also helped establish the Vietnam Revisited exhibit, which began several years ago at Huntington Park and moved to Suffolk last year. The exhibit helped raise money for the memorial.
The Tidewater Freedom Run, also held to raise money for the memorial, became popular among regional motorcylclists because of Freedom Now.
And the group has had some success getting legislation adopted. POW/MIA flags now fly over many state government buildings because of a bill promoted by Freedom Now and pushed through the General Assembly by former state Sen. Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, now a U.S. senator.
These accomplishments, Wood said, were closer to her goals for Freedom Now anyway.
``I didn't know if my actions would bring any men back alive,'' Wood said. ``But I hoped my actions would keep alive their memory.''
Wood and Patti Hallman, another former Freedom Now member whose father was shot down over Laos in 1970, are remaining active through the national Vietnam Veterans of America group.
``It's not just about getting my father back,'' said Hallman, chairwoman of government affairs for the Virginia State Council of the Vietnam Veterans of America. ``It's also that I don't want it happening to another generation.''
Wood and Hallman have had to temper their approach. The VVA's policy toward Vietnam is less hard-line than Freedom Now's. The group works with the Vietnamese to get a full accounting of their country's missing men, as many as 300,000 of them, said George Duggins of Chesapeake, a member of the VVA national board. In the process, VVA hopes to account for the more than 2,000 U.S. servicemen who are missing, Duggins said.
``We are trying to take the governments out of it,'' he said. ``We are trying to get American vets to work with Vietnamese vets.''
Duggins agreed that support is cooling, even within his organization, for the continued isolation of Vietnam until all missing Americans are accounted for.
``In our membership, opinions are split,'' Duggins said. ``Some believe there are live Americans over there and some believe there aren't any. But we all want a full accounting. We think the families deserve that.''
But even if that never happens, Darden thinks the wounds of veterans and their families are healing. He looks at the fall of the Soviet Union and sees Vietnam as a battle that, eventually, was won.
``When they brought that wall down in Germany, we could look back and say we did our part to end the Cold War.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by PAUL AIKEN, Staff
Patti Hallman, left, Terry Wood, Rachel A. Frankowski, Ron Sayles,
and Willis E. Darden Jr. are disbanding Freedom Now of Virginia
after a decade of fighting, they say. Interest in the Vietnam War
has waned.
KEYWORDS: VIETNAM WAR VETERANS by CNB