Letter is reminder of friendship and service
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on February 16, 2016 1:46 PM
Submitted photo
Jack Kannan, left, looks on as his friend and high school classmate, Bill Stone, reads a letter Kannan wrote while in Vietnam in 1966.
Jack Kannan gingerly pulled out a weathered, yellowing piece of paper with fading print and a smattering of typos -- it was, after all, dated June 13, 1966, long before self-correcting typewriters and computers.
The letter was in an envelope bearing the handwritten instructions "Air Mail," an 8-cent stamp still neatly affixed in the upper corner.
Until recently, it had been among a box of letters sent to support and encourage Kannan while he was serving in Vietnam.
"It was in the shed in my old house," he said. "We moved three and a half years ago."
Only recently, when Kannan retired from Wayne Community College, did his wife, Beth, herself a retired nurse, gently nudge her husband to go through some of the boxes.
He recalled the faithful who had kept the letters coming during his tour of duty in Vietnam -- "mainly my mother and father and sister," he said.
But then he came upon the one from Bill Stone. A high school classmate, football teammate and fellow Class of 1962 graduate from Goldsboro High School, Stone went on to become an international opera star.
And author of the letter Kannan held in his hand.
"I didn't remember Bill Stone ever writing me," he said. "I picked it out and started reading it. I didn't realize how emotional it got."
The poignant moment continued, as he discovered something even more unexpected.
"There was a letter that I wrote to him but never mailed," he said.
Understandable, he explained, recalling how things were as an Army paratrooper with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the first combat squadron assigned to Vietnam.
"I was drafted, and I had the distinction of going through training, basic advanced infantry training, airborne school and then Vietnam," he said. "I stayed there 15 months."
Living at base camp, Kannan's brigade saw a lot of action during the war.
It is something the 71-year-old still can't easily talk about.
Which is why he probably forgot something as simple as mailing a letter to his friend.
The exchange, for the most part, was light-hearted with a few hints belying the era in which they were written.
"Dear Jackie," Stone's typewritten letter began. "Here I sit enjoying a cool night like 80 million other Americans while you and 250 more thousand suffer through God knows what. Bon (wife, Bonnie) and I remarked the other day as we were on our way to the beach, 'I wonder how Jackie's doing in Viet Nam?"
Stone's concern was that "anything I have to say seems trivial compared to what you are doing," suggesting his classmate request transfer to a "nice quiet village with a small population of Buddhist monks." He even offered to send a book on Buddhism to help Kannan read up on the local customs.
"Do let me hear from you if you get a free moment," Stone wrote. "I'm anxious to learn how the Viet Nam situation really is. The news broadcasts seem to give only half the story."
Kannan's handwritten reply, dated June 20 of that year, started out whimsically responding to the highlights of his friend's letter.
"You have nothing on me," he wrote. "I was at the beach the other day. It took us twenty-nine days to walk there but we made it."
He also chronicaled some of what the atmosphere was like, which he now admits was uncharacteristic.
"I didn't typically share anything about what I was going through," he said.
"On this last field problem we ran into a VC (Vietcong) village the second day out," he wrote. "It was a costly fight where we lost twenty-three men and had one hundred and forty one injured. I don't know how many VC we killed but I feel that we could have done a little better on a few things. This is my own opinion.
"We stayed at the village for about three days and you have that odor of death all around you that will sure help you lose weight if you stay there long enough."
He mentioned digging foxholes and trying to settle in for the night, when a sniper opened up fire. Fortunately, as it turned out, it wasn't the most adept sniper.
Then an exchange ensued, with Kannan's brigade being attacked with grenades and automatic weapons.
"That was when I was scared most of all," he wrote. "You can't see one foot in front of you and it's hard to see a grenade being thrown at you.
"We saw sparks from their weapons and then we opened up with our rifles and grenades. They left and I was thankful for that. The rest of the night was rather peaceful."
As luck would have it, with the discovery of the unmailed letter, Kannan remembered Stone would soon be his house guest, as Stone was one of the recent inductees into the Goldsboro High School Hall of Fame.
The baritone has sung extensively in major opera houses in Europe and Italy and performed with virtually every major orchestra in the country, including the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony. A professor emeritus of voice and opera at Temple University, he lives in Cary and teaches voice at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
The two had lost touch for awhile after the war, said Kannan, who was aware of his friend's successful career.
In his role as executive director of the Foundation at WCC, when the arts and humanities program kicked off around 2000, it seemed like an appropriate time to reconnect.
"I was trying to think of ways of raising money (for scholarships)," he said. "I had him come and kick off my galas. He'd graciously come and do that."
The two have seen each other often since then, but until recently the matter of the letter was unbeknownst to both.
On the weekend of Stone's induction, Kannan decided the time was right to hand deliver his response.
"I was gonna let him know that I didn't not write him -- I just didn't mail it," he said.
It was a poignant experience for the two men, Kannan said.
"I asked him to read his letter first because I wanted him to get the mindset again. And then I said, 'Bill, 50 years later here's my response. I just failed to mail it.' And I gave it to him," he said.
"He didn't read the whole thing. He read what he could. Then he was tearing up and all that. We had a good moment."
All the emotions. All the time that had passed, now culminated in the middle of Kannan's living room.
"I think we both cried," Kannan said. "You think you have buried (the feelings) but they all come out."