Dear Bill, today is February 13th, 1984.

I came to this black wall again to see and touch your name.

And as I do, I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name on this black

wall is your mother's heart.

A heart broken 15 years ago today when you lost your life in Vietnam.

And as I look at your name, William R. Stocks, I think of how many times I used to wonder

how scared and homesick you must have been in that strange country called Vietnam.

And if and how it might have changed you, for you were the most happy, go lucky kid in

the world, hardly ever sad or unhappy.

And until the day I die, I will see you as you laughed at me.

And when I was very mad at you and the next thing I knew, we were laughing together.

But on this past New Year's day, I had my answer.

I talked by phone to a friend of yours from Michigan who spent your last Christmas and

the last four months of your life with you.

Jim told me how you died, for he was there and saw the helicopter crash.

He told me how you had flown your quota and had not been scheduled to fly that day, how

the regular pilot was unable to fly and had been replaced by someone with less experience,

how they did not know the exact cause of the crash.

Now it was either hit by enemy fire or that they hit a pole or something unknown.

How the blades went through the chopper and hit you.

How you lived about a half hour, but were unconscious and therefore did not suffer.

He said how your jobs were like sitting ducks.

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