Vietnam: Unburdening a heart and honoring a friend

40-plus years after the Vietnam war, a Jupiter man hopes to unburden
his heart and honor his friend

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/07/05/a1a_vet_back_0706.html

By DIANNA SMITH
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 05, 2009

Soldiers carry things.

That's what they do. And when they're done fighting, they can put
down their load.

Right?

But what about a load that refuses to lighten? One that's shouldered
year after year, so that soldier and burden become one?

Jim Lewis carried such a weight.

On July 16, 1968, his friend and fellow Marine Jesse Griego walked
over a buried bomb on Hill 88, south of Pu Bai, in Vietnam. Jim was
there, cradling the dying man like a baby.

Both men, caked in brownish-red dirt, huddled on the dry ground in
unbearable heat. Jim didn't say a word. He could only stare in
disbelief as the shrapnel in Jesse's chest quickly did its intended
job and his friend whispered, "I'm going home."

Then Jesse- just 20, a New Mexico man who loved fishing and cars-
slipped away.

Like so many others, Jim Lewis - now 61 and living in Jupiter -
carried on. He would become a sheriff's deputy, a helicopter pilot
and an actor and stuntman in movies with his mentor, Burt Reynolds.

On the outside, he seemed charmed, a strapping guy of 6-foot-3 with a
handsome face and a disc jockey voice.

But like so many others, in a pocket of his heart, his burden. The
dreams, where Jesse would appear. This guilt: Why Jesse and not him?
And the numbness. A part of him was dead, too.

Would this burden ever be lifted?

There was only one way to find out.

Jim Lewis would make something good come out of Jesse Griego's death.

And then he might know if he could find peace.

Generosity from Burt Reynolds, other locals

The 5-year-olds in this school half way around the world don't know
Jesse Griego.

They can't read the shiny plaque hanging near the front doors, where
English words tell students the school is here because of him.

They don't know that this man now squatting down to look them in the
eye - and getting giggles and kisses for his efforts - collected the
money to build their school in Jesse Griego's honor.

They don't know that from his home in the United States, in Florida,
in Northern Palm Beach County, this towering man spent six months
raising $25,000 from donors all over the country - half from Palm
Beach County alone, including the Vietnam Veterans of America Palm
Beach County Chapter 25, which Jim co-founded, and from his friend
Burt Reynolds.

The money paid for this one-room school and tuition for 50 kindergarteners.

In this remote village in the Quang Tri Province on the north central
coast of Vietnam, children walk barefoot and most can barely read or
write. They speak their own dialect, which won't take them far if
they want a better life.

That's where the big man and the new school come in.

At the Jesse Griego Kindergarten, they will learn Vietnamese, the
country's national language. They will eat lunch every day and study
in a building with electricity and running water, luxuries many don't
have in their rickety homes.

This, Jim Lewis says, is not the place where Jesse died.

But maybe, just maybe, it's where his spirit will live.

Mission: New memories, not old

When Jim Lewis stepped off the plane in late March, he expected to
feel something. Maybe a few tears would stream down his face or, in
his stomach, he would feel weak.

Instead ... nothing.

He was back in Vietnam for the first time in 41 years, breathing the
thick, sauna-like air, the fragrance of spices and charred firewood
seemingly locked in each wet particle.

That smell, that air, took Jim back.

But nothing else did.

He saw paved roads and vibrant downtowns. Motor scooters and upscale
restaurants. No helicopters circling the sky. No body bags stacked on
the streets. No blood, no screaming.

This was a different Vietnam.

But then, he told himself, this was a different mission.

Jim Lewis had turned down four prior invitations to return to Vietnam
with former Marines, because the purpose of those trips was to
uncover old memories.

"Why suffer more?" Jim asks, shrugging his shoulders. As well as
seeing death all around him, he'd barely escaped that fate himself,
spending nine months recovering after a grenade discharged near him.
"I don't need to be reminded. I live it every day. All I've got to do
is look in the mirror."

This trip's goal was to create new memories.

In 2007, he discovered PeaceTrees Vietnam, a group which oversees the
building of libraries and kindergartens. Most of the money for the
projects comes from families or soldiers in the United States
mourning a death from the war.

PeaceTrees hired villagers to build the school in six months and
construction finished in mid-March.

The paint was still drying when Jim made his trip. His focus then was
solely on Jesse and the students now learning because of him.

"I hope 10,000 kids go through these doors," Jim says, "and all
because of Jesse."

And if healing came for him, well, that would be nice, too.

It was 'OK for me to be alive'

On the morning of the school's dedication, before the sun peeked, Jim
Lewis sat alone in his hotel room and unfolded the list of the 140
people from around the country who donated money to this school.

He read each name out loud: "Ruth Lewis ... Teresa Mayo ... Victor
Birdsong ... Bob Lascher ... Lisa Mastorides ... Eileen Donohue ..."

He wanted them remembered, he says, even if no one else was there to hear.

"I said 'Thank you very much,' and said a prayer," Jim recalls. "I
was about to do something that was going to make a big difference."

Then he took a bumpy ride into a valley that ended at a yellow
building. The Jesse Griego Kindergarten. A crowd of villagers had
gathered and Jim was introduced to the eager students, who stood
mesmerized by this gigantic stranger.

They led him to the hallway where a black cloth dangled over that
polished new plaque. They told Jim to lift it.

And when he did, he saw Jesse Greigo's name.

And this tall, brave Marine began to cry.

"It unveiled me," Jim later says.

Tears fell. Guilt disappeared. The load he'd been carrying? Gone.

"For the first time in 41 years, it was really OK for me to be alive."

Finally, Jim Lewis could carry on.

.